


The Bequest

by JoJo



Category: Magnificent Seven (TV)
Genre: Abandonment, Big Bang Challenge, First Time, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Masturbation, Old West, Rape/Non-con References
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-10
Updated: 2012-01-10
Packaged: 2017-10-29 08:10:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 24,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/317674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JoJo/pseuds/JoJo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Out of the blue, Ezra's cousin comes to town.  Town is quite impressed, but some of the Seven aren't so sure.  Ezra himself isn't happy at all, and as for Chris… he soon realizes the visitor could make a new and perplexing situation downright dangerous.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Bequest

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to:
> 
> \- Fara for the initial prompt and suggestions  
> \- J, C and K at WEC for input on the early draft  
> \- rubystandish for the lovely accompanying artwork   
> \- the fabulous mendax for the beta and for just being wonderful
> 
> All mistakes mine alone

When a man falls in love, Grandpa used to say, he’d best look to his pocketbook. And he’d best make damned sure it didn’t happen again.

The old man had been fond of spouting what he took to be self-evident truths, and Chris often thought of him sitting upright in his fireside chair cackling at whatever he’d said that made the womenfolk roll their eyes.

There was something about the old man Nathan was currently treating out at the village that reminded Chris strongly of his grandfather. The constant carping was part of it, the inflexible opinions for sure. And certainly the bad-tempered waving away of the anxious old women hovering around the _chickee_.

Late on the first night at the village, sitting around the fire, he’d brought up the resemblance, just because it had struck him so hard. Nathan had looked over in interest, and Ezra had stifled a yawn.

“Sounds a character, your grandpa.”

That was what Nathan had commented, voice low in deference to those sleeping nearby.

“Well, I guess he was,” Larabee had conceded, after thinking about it.

Grandpa had been obsessed with money, Chris could have told him that much. It was mostly because of the lack of it, he’d always figured. And his other stock-in-trade, which Chris had never quite understood, was bemoaning the perfidy of womankind, with their ensnaring ways and talent for making their husbands both poor and foolish. Hell, the old man had been cantankerous when Chris was born, by all accounts, and didn’t improve much with age.

“Had a soft spot for me though,” Chris had admitted at length. “Taught me how to carve, always meant for me to have this.” He rooted in a pocket for the cracked leather sheath he always carried. Tipping it so metal slid into his palm, he held up the small knife he used for whittling. Mostly he thought of its value in terms of what he’d made for Adam, but there was more to it than that. Some kind of link between grandfather and grandson, one comprised of blood, splinters and pronouncements only half understood. A relationship he reckoned he’d have no chance now to try for himself.

Maybe Nathan could see the connections, too, although he hadn’t said anymore at the time.

All in all though, once he reflected on it, Chris was kind of relieved Grandpa hadn’t been around the first time he did fall in love. The old man would have riled Sarah something fierce, would have reduced the whole thing to politics rather than emotion. It had been hard enough having Hank Connolly in the background, never mind any other doomsayers. And as for what Grandpa would have made of the second time…

In the end, though, there was no point wondering what Grandpa would have thought of anything, even though the idea caused Chris a crackle of apprehension, like an echo of his childhood. No, the main question that gnawed at him all the way back to town was what anybody was going to think, supposing they knew what was keeping him awake at night. If this strange mixture of elation and indisposition constantly fluttering under his ribcage and coiling around his guts really was what Grandpa had warned against. And, if so, how the hell it could possibly be happening.

Because, although Chris might have experimented one time in the army when all bets were off and they’d really thought they were all going to die the next day, the idea of actively wanting another man so bad, a man with a dick and a set of balls… well that seemed downright nonsensical to him. Not to mention illegal.

He planned to put it all aside once he arrived back in town, and at first it seemed he’d have to. As soon as he reached the jailhouse where Vin, Buck and JD were waiting he got the impression something was afoot. Just that worry alone should have cleared his mind of everything else, only then came the question—the name—which brought the whole thing back into sharp relief.

“When’s Ezra gonna be back?”

JD asked almost before Chris had reached solid ground. And even though Larabee knew from the kid’s face that he was expected to ask why—and his usual perversity made him not want to—in the end he couldn’t help himself.

“Why?” he muttered.

“Visitor in town to see him.”

His first thought was that Maude Standish was back. But JD’s facial expression was one of such sly glee that Chris was led to revise that almost at once. JD held the woman in naively high regard and wasn’t likely to look sly if she were anywhere around.

Buck didn’t look either gleeful or sly. Chris knew his face well enough to tell that the visitor was probably not female, and that Buck had some misgivings about whoever it was. As for Vin, well his hat was pulled down low enough over his eyes that Chris couldn’t judge what he thought at all.

“Nathan’s horse came up footsore this side of the pass, so I left him and Ezra to take things slow while I swung by the Paxtons’ and the Wells’.” He took a close look around the three of them, not sure he liked their expectation of either fun or trouble. “This visitor?”

“Been here since just after you left. He says he’s a cousin and he’s real anxious to see Ezra.”

“He on the level?”

Buck gave a faint smile at Chris’s suspicions. “Reckon he is. Got the look of it anyhow. Made himself right at home in the saloon.”

“Carries the family flask,” Vin added. He’d kept back from the circle on the boardwalk, body language plainly showing he wasn’t too interested in small-talk right now. “And the family mouth.”

While he wanted to know if there’d been some kind of a run-in already, Chris was more than curious to actually lay eyes on this relative given that it was nobody but Ezra permanently stuck in his consciousness these days, like some elusive but vital detail he needed to remember. All those signs they’d been giving each other on the trail were part of a wearing kind of dance between them he could no longer ignore. Something that had started as an enjoyable way to get at each other didn’t seem to be anything like that anymore. It damn well gave him indigestion for a start, and now he felt an uncharitable urge to learn something that Ezra wouldn’t be expecting him to find out.

“Figured you’d at least want to say howdy, welcome him to town.”

Chris decided he could get tired of JD’s brand of sly pretty quick. The kid wanted to see his reaction to the visitor, of course, because he knew that one way or another it’d be important. Chris felt the importance of it too, not missing the way Vin had already broken away and begun across the street to the saloon.

Figuring the quicker he got to this meeting the quicker he’d be able to head for a drink, a bath and a sleep, Chris held his hands palms up for a second to indicate he didn’t need any more chat, he was ready to go where they led him.

JD, against his likely instincts, stayed where he was. It was probably on an eye signal from Buck. “I’ll take your horse,” he offered in the end, and there was a resigned deflation in his voice now that made Chris quirk his lips.

Wilmington echoed the look, falling at once into step beside him, strides long and confident.

“Been any trouble?” Chris asked.

“No trouble,” Buck confirmed. “Just an... atmosphere.”

Chris didn’t like the sound of that.

A couple more townsfolk greeted him as they walked, which he found gratifying but in truth only increased his weariness. Just outside the saloon they were approached by Mary Travis, who rarely missed any of their comings and goings or the chance to ascertain that things were as peaceful as they could be.

“I swear that woman gets prettier by the day,” Buck said when she’d exchanged a few words with them and moved on. Chris heard the mischievous lilt in his voice but wasn’t in the mood to rise to it.

As soon as he came through the saloon doors, almost instinctively, even though he knew Ezra wasn’t in town, Chris looked towards the round table up on the platform. Several men were sitting up there under a smoky cloud. Two had their backs to him, as the regular players always did. Someone known and yet unknown sat in the chair that faced the bar, and Chris felt almost queasy at the sight. His principal thought, shouting loud in his head, was ‘that’s not right!’ And, as ever, those sitting up there seemed in thrall to the man at the head of the table.

Chris realized in the very moment his gut twisted how accustomed he’d become to that table looking a certain way. To the familiarity of Ezra sitting there at any time of day or night as if it was his domain. Seeing this stranger there, just as at home and looking unsettlingly recognizable at the same time as totally different, made Chris unhappier than he expected. Particularly right now.

The man looked up, briefly, as the saloon batwings swung inward. He had that same air of casually taking notice of things as the chair’s usual incumbent.

“Ezra’s cousin,” explained Buck under his breath and Chris tossed him an irritated glance. Who the hell else would it be? For sure the stranger had something of the look of Maude about him, his coloring nearer hers than Ezra’s.

“Meet Mr. Fitzgerald Holt… says he’s a resident of someplace outside Atlanta,” Buck said in a stage whisper, giving Chris a little push in the back with one finger.

Holt was already smoothly pushing back his chair, aware of the approach, as Chris began to stump up the steps toward him.

The visitor was not flashily dressed, but held himself in a way that suggested he knew he was pretty much superior in every way that mattered to everyone in his vicinity. His suit of clothes was probably worth something. The military-blue material had a faint and subtle sheen to it, his white wing-collared shirt stood up sharp and new. One tasteful and expensive pin could be glimpsed winking on his black vest as he reached his full height. The signs of wealth and acquisition were subtle but clear.

“Hear you’re waiting on Ezra,” he said as he reached the table.

“Indeed I am. Fitzgerald Holt, at your service, sir.” The manner was self-assured but polite, the accent southern as sweet tea—not tempered in the least by time spent away from his roots, as Ezra’s often was.

Chris judged him around Ezra’s age, perhaps a year or two younger, but nearly a head taller. He had a smooth-textured, bushy mustache, pale gold hair that waved over his brow in a way that suggested severe control had been exerted, and eyes bright as blue stones.

Uncomfortable at coming across like some town dignitary, Chris extended his hand across the table. It was a half-hearted gesture on his own part, but more robust on Cousin Holt’s.

“Chris Larabee.”

“So I assumed.”

Chris was damn curious to have before him a man who shared blood and history with Ezra, but he felt no desire to be sociable. Almost the opposite, in fact. Unwilling to be more hospitable than he figured he’d already been, he said nothing else. Probably JD and Buck had done all the welcoming necessary anyhow. Vaguely he wondered where Josiah was and why he hadn’t seen him, even in the distance, emerging from church or anywhere else to verify the first safe return from what they’d judged a dangerous trail.

“Mr. Holt?”

It was only then that Chris really registered who was sitting opposite the new arrival. The owner of the recently opened drug and cigar store was there, as well as a ranch boss from west of town. Both were men of means, dressed smart themselves, cigarillos to hand and shot glasses filled from a bottle of something that was most definitely not standard Red Eye.

There were no cards on the table. Chris just then registered that, too, and he was almost relieved. To have had Fitzgerald Holt sitting up there running a game—in Ezra’s chair, as he acknowledged to himself in surprise—would have been too... strange. Instead, there were papers spread out on the table, an inkstand and some pens. A pair of reading spectacles and a ledger of some kind sat at Holt’s elbow. Rather than gambling, it looked like they were conducting business.

Chris took a half step backwards. He didn’t want to be bothered with any of this. “We’re expecting Ezra back in town in a couple of hours.”

Holt eased away, sat himself down again with a flick of his coat tails. “Glad to hear that,” he said with a pleasant smile. “Not havin’ much time to spare.”

Well, if you will turn up unexpected, Chris thought sourly. He hesitated for a second more, expecting something else, although he wasn’t quite sure what. But Holt’s attention had gone back immediately to the men sitting opposite and Chris felt himself surplus to requirements.

He turned to go down the steps and saw Buck leaning hipshot against the bar with a beer mug in hand, a quizzical look on his face. It was not unlike the look he’d worn for much of the first weeks of acquaintance with Ezra. As if he couldn’t quite work out what he was looking at but was pretty well entertained anyhow. At a table in the further reaches of the saloon Chris could see Vin too.

Buck, with an eloquent raise of his brows, pushed up from the bar, left Chris to furnish himself with a shot. For some time he stood at the bar on his own, contemplating the glass. He was stiff-legged from riding and in need of hot water and hot food. The whiskey was good when he tipped it back, though. By the time he’d ordered a second shot and turned around, JD had arrived back from the livery.

“Proper gentleman, ain’t he?” Buck said, indicating Fitzgerald Holt with wry amusement when they were all sat around the table. It was a confusion to Chris as to whether he should somehow stand up for the man sitting on the platform behind them, being as how he was... family.

“Don’t seem to fit round here,” was what he said in the end. “What’s the connection, anyhow? Didn’t seem too keen to tell me.”

“Seems he’s a first cousin on his mother’s side,” JD supplied, happy to be the bearer of details. “His mother’s and Ezra’s ma. I mean, they’re sisters.”

“Sisters...”

The notion of there being more than one matriarch like Maude Standish in the world was a disturbing one. That none of them knew that fact, despite her several stays in town, was equally so.

“Looks just like her, don’t you think?”

“Looks like Maude all right.” It was the sharp, wide-awake eyes more than anything. A sudden thought occurred to him. “This got anything to do with why I ain’t seen Josiah yet?”

A soft snort came from Vin’s side of the table.

“Could be,” Buck said. “Or more likely it’s because the man got right up and walked out on a sermon yesterday. Ain’t that right, JD?”

“Yup. Just stood up and walked out while Josiah was speaking.”

A grin began to play around Buck’s features. “’Course, old Josiah just carried right on... well, so I hear, I wasn’t in church myself... like nothing had happened.”

“Reckon Josiah found it kind of a challenge,” supplemented JD. “Didn’t seem right offended or nothing. In fact, two of them spent all yesterday afternoon jawin’ together.”

Chris could imagine that somehow. Josiah never passed up a chance to engage with the well educated. “Why would Holt walk out?”

“Well...” JD shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “Josiah wasn’t exactly speaking Bible words. It was religious all right, just not... Bible.”

Chris digested that along with another swallow of whiskey.

“And he just turned up, this cousin? Outa nowhere?”

“Well if Ezra was expecting family, he sure didn’t say so.”

But then, since Maude generally turned up out of the blue, that was not much of a surprise.

“If he didn’t look so damn like her...” Buck’s eyes strayed over to the platform and then back. “Well, I’d be wondering if it was some mark comin’ back to get one over on Ezra. He don’t carry a gun though.”

“Sure is dressed well.” JD was admiring.

“Hmph.” Chris buried his nose in his shot glass. When he looked up again, Vin was staring right at him, somewhat questioning, somewhat weighing things up in his own mind.

“Somehow I’m guessing Ezra ain’t gonna be right pleased to see him.” Buck smacked his lips, examined the empty inside of his beer mug.

“He said why he’s here?”

“Nope.”

“It’s what family does, ain’t it?” Vin questioned then. “Make visits.”

He and Buck didn’t seem quite sure of what they thought. As if they didn’t know whether to be amused at the prospect of Ezra’s deflation on being compared to this paragon of success, class and riches, or whether they’d need to keep an eye on him because of it.

Chris was absolutely sure what he thought and he banged down his glass. “Gonna go get washed up,” he said. “Think maybe we should be around when Ezra gets back.” He looked at the others, was relieved to see no recognition of special anxiety on his part. Buck nodded.

“I ain’t moving,” Vin said.

Leaving the saloon, Chris gave the merest of glances up to the platform. Fitzgerald Holt was deep in conversation.

*

The dust was just now starting to itch under his clothes. It was because the sweat of the ride in had dried it against his skin and now it was all shaking loose. And his boots were feeling heavy as lead, his bones sore. All familiar sensations, even though it had been one of the oddest trails Chris had known since the seven of them fell into association.

Not for what it was. But for how it felt.

Ezra was not generally the first to volunteer for what he considered mundane duties. Accompanying Chris and Nathan to the Seminole village following a message that one of the elders was sick again with pains in the chest wasn’t the kind of thing he considered a vital part of his job. But there’d been some trouble in the rocky foothills five miles or so from the village recently—a couple of hold-ups, one of which had turned fatal—and Chris reckoned they’d be safer three than two.

He could have taken Buck. Or Vin. He knew that, as much they both knew that, and Ezra certainly made it plain he did too.

But Chris chose Ezra.

It was a choice almost made for him in some ways. He just knew if he didn’t take him he’d spend the whole time away wishing he had. Just the same as he knew if he did take him, he’d spend the whole time wishing he hadn’t. He figured the wishing in the first instance would be that much more uncomfortable.

“You’re coming, Ezra,” he’d said, making it sound a little like a punishment. And Ezra had slouched in his seat, drumming his fingers on the green baize and muttering his not very favorable opinion, thereby behaving exactly as all the rest expected.

Then out on the trail he’d done just a little of his normal complaining. Not too much. It tailed off after a few hours and then things had been fine. There’d been just a glimpse of that look of his, that half-nervous half-exasperated one, as if anything Chris said directly to him reduced his brains to slop and pissed him off in the process. Again, Nathan just seemed to assume it was their usual sparring.

Chris really couldn’t put his finger on anything significant. They’d avoided one another pointedly at times, at others found a way to end up walking the horses to water together, or getting in each other’s way over the coffee pot.

In the village they’d offloaded the supplies and then carried out some useful jobs while Nathan tended his patient and when the kids weren’t following around in hope of tricks and entertainment. Chris mostly figured it was his foolish imagination at work, thinking he and Ezra were catching one another’s eyes through the firelight when the sun had gone down and they were all relaxed and full of food.

On the way back, after coming through the dangerous pass safely, Chris had left the other two resting up Nathan’s horse, before making a quick detour to the Paxton place. It was only routine, something he thought wise to do now they were out here. He then rode back via Nettie Wells’, because he’d promised Vin he would, arriving back in town a couple of hours ahead of them.

*

Chris was clean and had a steak dinner inside him when he heard JD’s voice outside in the street declaring Nathan and Ezra were back.

Leaving his place at the restaurant table, he came out on the boardwalk as casual as he could. He noted at once that Buck was outside the jailhouse, Vin too. Josiah had appeared at last, was wandering down towards them following the two horses that were coming into town at a slow pace.

“Everything all right?” Nathan asked as soon as they’d arrived before the jail. He seemed suspicious at the welcome party.

“Yeah, we’re fine.” JD took off his hat to rub at his forehead. Buck had clamped a hand to the back of his neck to stop him blurting the news straightaway.

Ezra didn’t tend to overlook signs and signals. He dismounted with some sardonic comment about how kind it was of them all to line the street for him.

“You have a visitor.” Chris was damn relieved that he got to be the one to tell him. Ezra’s eyes darted in his direction, immediately gauging the situation.

“Friend or foe?”

“Neither!” JD chipped in, unable to help himself.

Vin had pushed upright from the post on which he’d been leaning, and was now looking over at the saloon.

Sure enough the doors had opened.

A figure had come out and begun a slow walk across the street. Holt was hard to ignore. He was all clean lines and elegance, wearing impractical but superior clothes and carrying a smart top hat. Ezra turned as soon as he saw where the others’ eyes were straying.

“It’s your cousin, been in town a day or two, waiting on you.”

Ezra fixed JD with a withering look. “I can see who it is.”

Completely dispassionate, in fact so cool that the hair stood up at the back of Chris’s neck to see it, Ezra turned back to the street and watched the figure all the way over. As Holt drew near, Chris began to regret his insistence that they all be present for the meeting. Already he was beginning to feel like he was intruding.

“Cousin Holt.”

Ezra’s voice held a lilting politeness that was familiar, but so much less breezy than normal Chris didn’t care for it at all.

“Cousin Standish.”

Taking the steps up on to the boardwalk, Holt came to a stop about two feet in front of them all. He was definitely a head taller than Ezra and seemed impossibly smart given the dust that commonly swirled about town this time of the year.

“Good day, Mr. Sanchez, gentlemen.” His voice, like his bearing, was friendly and at ease. In fact, Chris thought with a strange squeeze of his heart, all in all he made Ezra look positively shabby, even without the effect of trail-dust. The cousins did not shake hands.

“What brings you to our town?” Ezra’s tone remained soft. It was not the wheedling one he often used with strangers, the one that aimed to ingratiate. It was pitched low and defensive.

“How long has it been?” Holt said lightly, ignoring the question. “Ten years? Fifteen? More?”

“Does my mother know you’re here?”

“Ah no, I have not had the... pleasure of seeing Aunt Maude in a very long time.” Holt let his gaze run curiously around the group, coming to rest on the man who’d ridden in at Ezra’s side. Immediately he looked back to Ezra as if to ask for some explanation.

“This is Mr. Jackson.” Ezra still spoke in the same controlled manner, as if keeping the lid on something by sheer force of will. “Mr. Nathan Jackson. Town healer and my associate.”

“Mr. Jackson.” At once Holt held out his hand to Nathan who, after a slight hesitation, reached out his own and shook. Turning back to Ezra straight away Holt gave him a smile.

“You’ve changed.”

It was a thoughtful observation rather than critical. Chris was almost sure Holt was referring to Ezra’s appearance rather than anything else.

“Why are you here?” Ezra asked him and Holt took a quick, further look around the group. His smile did not slip.

“Lord, cousin. I have heard all about your tenure in this town and, enterprising as I know you to be, I initially had to stretch credibility to believe in it. But, having been here a few days now and having spent some time with your fellows… well, y’all do seem to have made a success of the venture, I must say.”

“It’s not exactly a venture,” Ezra returned at once but Holt carried on smiling at him as if in fond exasperation. Chris noticed that JD, for one, appeared a little embarrassed at Ezra’s prickly demeanor, and Josiah faintly regretful. Nathan just looked curious to see how it would all work out. Once again standing back, slightly turned away as if on the watch for something else, Vin caught Chris’s eye. He seemed mostly detached.

“Anyway,” Holt resumed, “It’s been a most enjoyable stay, but I am here to meet with you in private, on personal, family business.”

Despite the tension, Chris saw a slight smirk threaten Buck’s hitherto serious expression. True enough, Ezra looked so damn sour and his cousin so good-humored it was almost comical. Almost.

“We’ll leave you two alone,” he said.

“Let you get all caught up,” Buck added, properly serious once more although he was twinkling fit to bust.

There was just a brief moment when Ezra’s eyes flicked to Chris and Chris thought he might have read a plea for deliverance in them, but then almost at once Ezra seemed to remember himself. He slapped at his sleeves and drew himself up to his full height. It didn’t make much of an impression on Cousin Holt, who frowned mildly at the dust flying into the air.

“Allow me to make myself more presentable,” Ezra said quietly. “I will meet you over at the restaurant in an hour.”

“An hour?” Holt dipped his head in amusement. “Ah yes, I’d forgotten... No, no, you go ahead.”

Chris hated, he really hated the embarrassed look that came over Ezra then. As if his attempt to wrest back some control had come to worse than nothing.

“Gentlemen.” Ezra delivered his usual hat tip around the group, voice sounding uncharacteristically empty. He turned on his heel and headed towards the saloon and his room.

Holt’s hand strayed up to touch his own hat brim absently as Ezra left. Then he straightened his jacket.

“Family,” he said. “What a strange and many-headed beast it is. Don’t you think so, preacher?”

Josiah scratched at his beard. “More like a garden. Needs cultivating.” The brief exchange held no animosity and Chris figured they’d found common ground somewhere along the line.

Holt pursed his lips at that. “No, no. In this case, definitely a beast.” He smiled. “But now, please excuse me, gentlemen. I have business to transact at the Bank. I will wish you all a good evening.”

When he’d walked away, it was as if the man had left an atmosphere tangible as fine powder behind him. Seemed like he was someone who couldn’t be ignored, for good or bad. JD was cheerful enough, Buck and Josiah too, but Chris felt something settle under his clean clothing, making his skin uncomfortable, bad as the dust.

“Well he’s got the smarts all right, and manners and all. And money. I kinda like him.” That was JD.

“Reckon we should be pleased Ezra’s got family in town,” Nathan agreed.

“Wonder what the business is?” Buck mused.

“Well if it’s any of our business, Ezra will tell us.” Chris knew his forthright tone had probably taken the other three aback.

Buck eventually squinted at him through one eye. “Thought that steak had taken the edge off your grumps.”

“Grumps?”

“Ah hell, Chris, I know you gotta be tired and saddle-sore, had Ezra jabberin’ in your ears for days, and now this. Give anyone the grumps.”

“Buck, I ain’t got the grumps.” Chris gestured at him, a tad impatient but not high-handed enough to make Buck resist him. “Go and deal with Ezra’s horse and stop talkin’ shit.”

Buck raised a brow, leaned towards Josiah. “Grumps,” he said knowingly.

*

Sitting in the saloon, they saw Ezra come downstairs some minutes later and exit hastily through the back with a new suit of clothes over one arm, headed for the bath house.

There was some laughter over the notion of him frantically primping in an attempt to rival the sartorial splendor of Cousin Holt, although Chris found he couldn’t join in. The thought of such desperation didn’t please him. And then the thought of Ezra peeling off his trail-stained clothing, right down to the underwear, and then climbing naked into a bathtub made him feel impatient and uncomfortable. Impatient because he couldn’t seem to get the image out of his mind, even over a hand of poker, and uncomfortable because... hell.

It was dark by now and they didn’t see Ezra pass the saloon on his way to the restaurant.

Somehow they weren’t expecting to lay eyes on him again that evening, presuming the dinner would last for some hours seeing as how the two relatives hadn’t seen one another for so long. Chris’s memories of “family business” suggested such things didn’t get resolved quickly.

So it was a damn surprise all around when, hardly more than time for a brief bite to eat later, the batwings swung open and Ezra came in.

“Slick, hoss, very slick,” Buck hailed, looking him up and down. He was dressed in the darkest jacket he owned, the least flamboyant, although Chris was secretly pleased to see he wore one of his fussiest shirts.

“You ain’t finished already?”

Ezra eyed JD severely as he drew near the table where they sat away from the main hubbub in the saloon. Sometimes the kid plain forgot himself, Chris mused.

“For this evening, yes.”

“Drink?” Chris said, glad the catch in his throat hadn’t sounded. There was a faint flush about Ezra’s face that was downright appealing.

Ezra frowned. At his hesitation, Vin sat up straight, reached out a leg and hooked a chair with one boot, dragging it over to where Nathan could snag it and slide it into place between him and Josiah.

“Everything all right?” Nathan’s question was concerned.

Sliding into the chair, Ezra offered them all the hint of a smile. “Yes indeed.” He accepted a shot glass and drank.

“Well you gonna tell us or keep it all to yourself?” Buck demanded.

There was an instant flash of gold. “I’ll tell you, Mr. Wilmington, with pleasure. And then yes... I may very well be keeping it all to myself.”

“Oh hell,” Chris couldn’t help saying. Ezra suddenly looked so damn pleased about life that it made him nervous. He hadn’t had time to have poured much wine or anything else down his throat, and unless he’d been necking from a secret stash up in his room, which seemed unlikely, there was certainly more to his air of brimming satisfaction than liquor.

“Can we take it Cousin Holt has brought good news?” Josiah asked.

“He has.” Ezra reached to a pocket to extract his pasteboards. There was already an untidy pile in the center of the table from one of the saloon decks, but, as they knew by now, Ezra liked nothing better than socializing with a hand of his own cards. At once he began an easy, fancy shuffle, which Chris reckoned he did to calm himself down. It always took their eyes off his face, too, although this evening Chris fought against that instinct, kept his attention firmly on the spots of high color in his cheeks and the glint of the late-night saloon reflecting in his eyes.

“Gonna put us out of our misery?” Vin demanded at that point, voice a tad distrustful of Ezra’s front, as ever.

“It appears,” Ezra responded to him smoothly, probably knowing they were all mesmerized by the cascade of cards moving between his hands, and doing his best to keep their visual attention there for the moment. “It appears that I have come into some money.”

“Oh hell.” Chris couldn’t help himself again and he was cross because Vin immediately laughed out loud. At him.

Just for a second, Ezra’s concentration nearly broke, but he carried on with no more than the appearance of a tiny line of annoyance between his brows.

“Our grandfather... my mother’s father, that is... well, as far as I’m aware from second and third-hand accounts, he’s lived many years beyond expectations given a... uh weak heart and tendency to over-indulge in claret and temperamental outbursts. But no more.” A slight, painfully inappropriate smile curved Ezra’s lips. “Henning Beauregard has finally met his Maker.”

“So that will be grief making your eyes shine?” Josiah enquired mildly.

Ezra’s gaze flicked up from the cards, unrepentant. “I’d be more inclined to grieve over him if he hadn’t disinherited both my mother and myself within weeks of my birth.” The gold tooth flashed in defiance. “Although it does appear he had a change of heart. In my case anyhow.”

“So your granddaddy’s died and left you some money?” JD was genuinely excited by this turn of events it seemed, still not apparently aware of either the irony or the potential for trouble. Chris himself felt intrigued by the casual hint of family schism, especially since it seemed expressly linked to Ezra’s arrival in the world.

“He left all of us some money.”

“All of you?”

“There are two other cousins besides Mr. Holt and myself.” Ezra gathered up the cards in one pile again, fell to manipulating the deck one-handed while he reached for his glass and took a sip. “And Grandfather Beauregard was a very rich old man.”

A silence fell, and eventually Ezra dragged his gaze from the faces of the cards and looked around the table. If Chris wasn’t mistaken, he was nonplussed by the lack of reaction.

“Well... congratulations!” JD was prompted to say and Ezra inclined his head.

“How much?” Chris was blunt.

“And how very rude of you to ask,” Ezra said, delighted with that, and gracing him with a easy smile, one open enough it warmed his belly. “In any case, that I cannot establish until the family lawyer arrives. He has been obliged to oversee the enactment of the will with each of us in person. I understand he would have arrived with Mr. Holt, had he not been otherwise engaged at the last minute.”

“And you’re sure he’s comin’ to bring you news of money?”

“Well, all the cousins have received a generous amount, plus annual stipend. And believe me, I am not the only one of us to have been disinherited in the past, although my exclusion has been the most… permanent. It appears that faced with his mortality the delightful old gentleman repented on a lifetime’s disregard for most of his daughters’ progeny. Cousin Holt, who has been very well endowed, would be the exception. He was always Grandfather’s favorite.” The cards moved faster than ever. “Been given the exalted position of trustee, which I daresay is why he’s been moved to come out here himself.”

Despite the breezy manner there was a sudden doubt in Ezra’s voice and a tightness around his mouth that made Chris nervous.

“How come he cut you and your ma out?”

Several sets of disapproving eyes swung to JD at the question, and although Ezra half smiled, Chris grew even more suspicious. He had a pretty good idea when Ezra wasn’t at ease.

“My birth was… unexpected, let us say. Privately the good Mr. Standish, to whom my mother was married, was not considered capable of… well, it was either a miracle or a scandal, and of course the family opted for the former, at least as far as the rest of society was concerned.”

JD seemed a little confused by what he’d heard. “So you’re a… a...”

“In reality a bastard,” Ezra supplied calmly. “Indeed. Through and through.”

“Well heck!” JD said. It might have been amusing if Ezra hadn’t had such a brittle edge to his voice. Buck shared the same status and had always managed to make a virtue out of it, but he didn’t say a word, just pulled on one side of his mustache.

“So how’d that work?” Chris asked quietly. He had an inordinate desire to be alone with Ezra now, to be hearing all this personal information in private, because it was his right to know and nobody else’s.

Ezra glanced at him, held his eyes for a second in contemplation. “My mother was already detached,” he said carefully, “by both choice and circumstance. I was actually born in Savannah where the unfortunate Mr. Standish presided over a cotton export company. I was given his name, to keep rumor at bay. When he died my mother, ever headstrong, decided we were going to… make our own way.”

Josiah drummed his fingers on the table after a while and then cleared his throat. “And does Maude know about all of this? This inheritance?”

“I have no idea. I doubt it, else she’d have been here waiting for a handout.” Ezra darted another look in Chris’s direction. It was an acknowledgement that they’d talked about Maude recently. It had been a short but warm conversation, of no great detail or import, but Ezra had seemed pleased about it at the time. As if he thought Chris was taking an interest, taking him seriously perhaps.

Buck was shaking his head. “Maybe your ma upset him, Ezra, but what the heck did the others do?”

Ezra quirked a brow. “Aunt Sadie, my cousin’s dear mother—apparently she was only recently cut out of the will. It appears she never visited Grandfather in his final sufferings, which frankly doesn’t surprise me. And as for Aunt Emmeline... well, he always thought her too greedy. Which in that family is really saying somethin’.”

‘That family’—characters of flesh and blood, who hadn’t wanted to acknowledge him. Chris felt like he was looking at Ezra in a different way all of a sudden and wasn’t yet sure if he was learning something useful or just having the waters muddied even further.

And the Misses Sadie, Emmeline and Maude Beauregard. Chris could almost imagine them: a warring trio of beautiful, moneyed sharp-eyed girls from the South. Despite the humor lacing Ezra’s voice when he mentioned them, there was a hint of something else too, something endlessly hurt and bitter.

“So...” The deep, meaningful tone of Nathan cut across the table. “This money, how did your granddaddy come by it all?”

There was an awkward silence. Ezra didn’t reply at once, but the rhythm of his hands stuttered.

“He owned land and property,” he said in the end. “Just outside of Atlanta.”

“Plantation land? Worked by slaves?”

“Indeed.”

“Your family were slave-owners?”

“Yes, Mr. Jackson.” Their eyes met. “How perceptive.” For the first time, the cards stilled, although Ezra kept talking. “And when they lost it all they started again, built up a second fortune in construction and munitions. It’s always been a military family.” He cleared his throat. “Although it has to be said, despite several abortive sojourns down the years, when my aunts took me in at my mother’s pleas—I think mainly to defy the patriarch for reasons best known to themselves—I never was part of said family. Not financially, or in any other way.”

“Until now.”

Ezra ignored that. “And I’m afraid I couldn’t tell you gentlemen about my father either, except that it seems likely he wasn’t much of a... gentleman.” He laid a hand on top of the deck where it lay. “And there you have it. All the information you need to know.” He didn’t sound nearly as cheerful as he’d been when he first sat down.

“You should have brought him along.” Buck grinned. “We could all have celebrated together.” He grinned even wider at Ezra’s narrow look and there were chuckles from the other side of the table.

“He has retired to the hotel. I do not believe him to be a great socializer.”

“Ya mean there’s a couple of us he didn’t want to sit around a table with.”

To Chris’s ear Vin sounded tired more than accusatory, although he found himself suddenly alert to where the sentiment came from. The remark was not insignificant, he knew that much, even though it kind of got lost amongst the general exchange. And the weariness suddenly seemed to have infected Ezra too. Instead of becoming defensive, which is what Chris would have expected, his shoulders slumped a little and he finally gave up all pretence of starting a game of anything.

“Whatever his motivation, I feel perhaps he has the right idea.” Sweeping the whole deck off the table in one motion, he replaced them in their box and pocketed it. As his chair scraped back and he reached to the table behind him to find his hat, his other hand indicated the greasy saloon cards still lying in a jumble in front of Josiah. “Try not to lose your entire month’s wages all at once, Mr. Sanchez. I will bid you all good night.”

“’Night, Ezra.” JD took it upon himself to speak for the table, seeing as they were not in the habit of chorusing greetings and farewells to one another unless there was a very good reason. “Thanks for tellin’ us your news. Reckon you’ll be sleepin’ sound tonight.”

There was a brief hand motion as Ezra rounded the table and headed for the stairs. Chris, discontented, made himself not watch him.

“Wonder what he’ll do with it?” Buck mused when the retreating figure had disappeared.

“If he’s any kind of chip off the Beauregard block, he’ll invest, just as his cousin seems so keen to do—in anything that’ll prosper when the railroads push on through.” Josiah looked thoughtful. “Maybe he’ll go into business with him, now they’ve been reunited.”

As far as Chris could make out it sure hadn’t looked like much of a reunion.

Josiah carried on musing out loud. “Makes for quite a vision. Ezra with money. Real money.”

They were all quite used to seeing dollar bills flowing in and then out of Ezra’s fists at a regular rate, but it wasn’t quite the same thing as him actually... having money.

“I’m guessing it’ll make him plumb stupid,” Chris said. “Just like me if I stay sittin’ here any longer.”

The evening broke up then, only Buck and Josiah electing to stay at the table.

Walking out into the dark street on his way to the boarding house, Chris turned a look back at the upstairs story of the saloon. His eyes wandered along to the only lit window, and the peculiar fluttering of indigestion settled in his stomach once again.

Ezra scrubbed tantalizingly clean from head to toe, dressed up formal and businesslike, aiming to rival Holt’s respectability and yet brazenly sporting those damn stupid riverboat ruffles… all false, cool confidence, his cheeks flushed pretty as a girl’s with heat and nerves.

Quite a vision. The kind of vision, now it had gotten lodged in his head, Chris wanted to do something with.

He took the vision with him to bed. Heck, even if he’d wanted he found he couldn’t leave it behind. That or the indigestion. Despite the rapidly approaching fatigue of a long day in the saddle, he could feel it. While he stripped himself down to his Henley and long cotton drawers he could feel it, a well of heat deep in his midriff. And when, after half a minute lying tense and open-eyed under the sheets, his hand straying down between the open buttons of his drawers, it burned stronger than ever.

For a short while he fought against the notion that lurked just out of sight, out of mind. That it was a different hand wrapping itself around him. Strong, well-shaped, the wrist encircled by snowy flounces, sliding into his clothing and easing him to full hardness. Then, slow and persistent, keeping him there on that sweetly unbearable edge. But he couldn’t exercise that level of denial for long. His rational mind made one last attempt to tell him it was his own callused fingers, familiar and ordinary. But hell... it felt so much better when he conjured the silky pads of Ezra’s fingertips, imagined they were the ones tipping him over, sliding so far under his balls that he shuddered and lifted his hips off the mattress. With that image, release came fast and hot.

“Damn, damn it, shit shit _shit_ ,” he found himself grinding out into the dark.

He nearly always let loose with something like that when he’d been pulling on his own dick for solace. However good it felt, he always ended up feeling cheated somehow.

“All over!” was Buck’s more favored description. He had no such discontents when he sang out from his pitch on the other side of the campfires of bachelorhood. Then, “Mary Ann...” he’d immediately specify in a satisfied purr, like he was cuddling up to her in his bedroll. Or it could be Janey, or Sweet Susannah from the convent school. “How ‘bout you? Hell, there was more cussing than usual, you sly dog. Musta been one perfect little filly.” Buck always enjoyed himself, was prepared to enjoy Chris’s experience by proxy too. Didn’t seem to give any of it a second thought.

It was just women leading you on, Grandpa always avowed, that made a man do dirty things.

As he drifted into a hazy sleep, hand and belly still sticky, Chris wondered if Grandfather Beauregard had ever talked such goddamned nonsense.

*

The next morning, Henning Beauregard’s least-appreciated grandchild opened his eyes on a colorless day.

Woken by the steady thumping of an anvil hit by iron at some distance down the street, Ezra fought his way out of a mound of bedclothes and sat leaning on one hand, staring across at the window while his head cleared.

There’s money, he thought. There’s money and it’s coming my way without my having to lift a finger.

Good Lord, he could hardly credit it. And this morning he didn’t feel quite the same anticipation as he had last night, which was even harder to credit.

As he swung his legs out of bed he registered the ache of hamstrings, the pull of sore muscles across his shoulders and down his sides. His pocket watch informed him it was some minutes after nine and therefore no time to be lounging about on his down pillow. A glance into the mirror showed him he looked as if he’d been sleeping in a thicket. He ran a hand across his stomach, feeling it empty and remembering the very little he’d managed to swallow at dinner the previous evening. Then he ventured south, just to make acquaintance with his ever-hopeful morning erection. For a second he admired the reflection it made in the mirror.

Ezra squeezed shut his eyes. Just for a second, stroking lightly up the underside, he’d wondered what a certain pair of lips would add to the picture. A head of sleep-tossed fair hair, a long neck and undoubtedly strong, deep throat....

“Ah shhhhh…”

He couldn’t get the word out. Instead, he dropped his hand, stepped over to the wash stand quickly and splashed some suitably chilled water on his face and then very thoroughly over his hair. He repeated the action until all ardor was dampened and he was miserably uncomfortable.

The clunk of metal on metal sounded again. For some reason it made his stomach feel empty. Out there the day was in full swing, and as ever he had to go and face it.

Before approaching the window he covered up in underclothes. There was a daub of light gray sky at the far end of the street, a zest to the air drifting in. Usually he cheered himself up looking out on the town before he dressed. Taking time to plan his costume. Today a feeling of discontent bloomed as he turned away and regarded the neat row of shirts in the closet, the array of jackets and neckties that awaited him.

The first person he saw when he descended the stairs, hat in hand, was Fitzgerald Holt, in the middle of breakfast. He sat alone at the table nearest the far window and he looked up unsmilingly when he saw Ezra.

“Yes,” Holt said before Ezra could utter a word, “it’s true, your thoughts are absolutely correct. I would not normally choose to eat here in the morning but I thought perhaps it would be polite, seeing as you’ve chosen this… cantina as your place of residence.” He made a face. “Although I never did think the Mexicans could cook. How do you stomach this oily stodge sittin’ in your gut day after day?”

“I’ve eaten in worse places.” It seemed a crass response. Ezra knew he should have been defending Inez’ cooking to the hilt, even though the eggs did slide about the plate a little too quickly for his own taste some mornings. He heard her now, clanking about near the range out back.

“Well are you joinin’ me?”

Ezra didn’t say anything as he sat. No ‘my pleasure’ or affirmation of any kind. Being in such close proximity made him feel physically sick.

“Good morning,” Inez trilled when she saw him, bearing a full, hot pot of coffee and a mug, which she placed in front of him before wiping her hands on her apron. She was all pretty shoulders and sparkling eyes but Holt seemed entirely immune. Then she reached for the plate pushed into the center of the table. “The breakfast did not please you, señor?”

“Not my preferred style of cuisine.” Inez flounced as she retreated with the plate, casting a heated look at Ezra as if such rudeness were really all his fault. Cousin Holt’s eyes followed her and then he leaned back in his chair. “Does she run this place?”

The ignominy of explaining how the saloon had fallen into and then out of his hands was too much for Ezra. “She does.”

“How bizarre. I thought she was a…” Holt broke off, seeing the look on Ezra’s face. “Well she is Mexican.” Then his attention was caught by the approach of someone past the window and in through the batwings and a smirk came to his features.

Ezra had hoped for Buck, Chris or even JD, but he guessed they were already up and about, had eaten some time ago.

It was Tanner, hatless, looking like he’d just come in from a night spent under a tree. He was on the hunt for breakfast.

Vin stood in the doorway for an instant, holding one batwing forward with a hand as his gaze raked over the room. Without missing a beat he gave Ezra a brief nod of greeting and then turned, let the batwing slap shut.

“He doesn’t care for my kind,” Holt said in explanation for the abrupt departure. “And I don’t care for his.”

“Man’s from Texas,” Ezra said drily.

“Man only needs a war-bonnet and he’d be all Injun.” Holt looked keenly at him for a moment, then shrugged, seeing he wasn’t going to get a rise. “Peculiar set of friends you’ve attached yourself to. But perhaps you won’t need to be attached to them for too much longer. It can only be a matter of a few days until Mr. Dixon arrives. Don’t worry, I won’t be waiting around to see how you discharge your newfound wealth. Once the business is transacted I will accompany him back to civilization directly.”

Ezra sat with one hand around his mug of coffee, staring at the man across the table. He wasn’t at all surprised to see a different character from the one who’d greeted him in public yesterday. The one he was sure the townsfolk were finding pleasant and interesting. And who probably believed found them pleasant and interesting in return. Hell, Holt probably didn’t even find them useful, not really. All this business chat was almost certainly just an amusement.

Unwillingly Ezra cast his mind back to their last acquaintance, at the Holt family house and to the rare, breath-stealing hug his mother had given him that day before she walked away. Ezra had worked out later that a part of the embrace, at least, was just for show, although what was real he thought he’d bust a gut to have again. At any rate, the unexpected show of affection had caused both Aunt Sadie and the young Fitzgerald’s mouths to loll open in surprise at the time. Competition between the sisters, in everything, had been ferocious, from the days they took their first baby steps.

There’d been an earlier brief visit to the house, too, when he was small. That had marked Ezra’s first and only contact with Grandfather Beauregard, hearing from behind a closet door the old man’s outrage at finding such a filthy interloper under his daughter’s roof.

“Well, now I’ve done my family duty for the day, I think I shall go and call on Mr. Watson in his funny little store.” The voice interrupted Ezra’s reverie but didn’t quite drag him back to the here and now. “And then that strange character who runs the gunsmith. I had ideas of some more… luxury retailers they might care to investigate.” Cousin Holt rose to his feet and stood brushing crumbs from his jacket with delicate, fussy hand movements that Ezra knew belied the man’s talent for delivering a crunching roundhouse punch to the jaw. He raised those fiercely gem-colored eyes, tugged his knife-edged jacket cuffs straight. “You don’t mind eating alone, I daresay?”

Time rolled away again with dizzying speed. Ezra remembered the young Fitzgerald Holt standing a head taller than him in blue knickerbockers and matching jacket.

He remembered all right.

Within a day of being deposited with his little-known aunt he’d learned all he needed of this boy—his mania for acquisition of playthings, food and attention, his overarching talent at everything he turned his hand to, and his malicious practical jokes. The latter had invariably resulted in something deeply unpleasant. Live creatures in the soup, for example, or surprises that knocked Ezra off his feet as he wandered desolate in this house he didn’t know. And oh yes, the piéce de résistance—excrement in his bed, stinking out the one place he’d seen as sanctuary and earning him an ear boxing he’d never forgotten.

Never forgotten, but as nothing to what came later.

Holt had always been precocious. Ezra had gleaned that from correspondence between the sisters, not just from acquaintance. And he’d always had an advantage in strength and height, one he used whenever he could. Try as he might Ezra couldn’t forget the powerful grip of Holt’s hands on his head, the stomach-churning, yeasty smell of him. Or the taste.

The old, disorienting hatred flared up for a second in his bones. It wrapped around his guts and made him want to gag. So much so he couldn’t answer the question. Vaguely he heard the batwing doors slap open again and a murmured, “Mornin’,” as Fitzgerald Holt passed someone new coming in.

Eventually he heard a low voice repeating his name and he felt the day slide back into place.

“You all right?”

He took a breath.

Chris was sitting across from him, hands resting tensely on the tabletop. He was looking closely at him, running his eyes over Ezra’s face from his hair to his mouth and back again. Close and intense enough that Ezra felt a feverish burn on both cheeks.

“I’m fine,” he said shortly.

“Ain’t you gonna eat your breakfast?”

Ezra blinked at the plate of food in front of him and he touched his breastbone gingerly. “I do believe I have indigestion all of a sudden.”

He was surprised when Chris almost grinned. “Hell,” he said, a touch rueful, “Me too.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Don’t be.”

All manner of observations trundled through Ezra’s head, about how unpleasant an indisposition it was, fraying to the nerves and debilitating to the body. How he believed Nathan might suggest some vile, chalky liquid as a temporary cure although he personally preferred peppermints. But he wasn’t able to articulate them. All he knew was that Chris Larabee was still staring at him. And that it was making him sweat.

Not much made Ezra sweat, not if he could help it.

“Are we to stay close to town today?” he croaked out eventually.

“You’re still needed to sit your shift at the jail.”

“I’m not attempting to get out of it.”

“It’s all right. I ain’t gonna send you anywhere. Know you want to stick around and wait on your lawyer.”

“He’s not my lawyer.”

“The family lawyer.” Chris revised his words with a dismissive face. He carried on looking Ezra over, almost seeming to be enjoying his discomfiture now. “Guess you must be gettin’ nervous.”

“Money does not make me nervous.”

“That’s right, I remember now. Don’t make you nervous, just makes you want to skip town.”

They’d had variations on this conversation countless times before. As much about what nearly happened as about what actually happened. And, in the Larabee worldview, it was never ‘leave’. It was never ‘terminate your contract by mutual agreement’ or just plain ‘move on’. No, always, always, it was ‘skipping town’ or ‘running out’.

Still, Ezra tried to reason with himself, if he was about to become a man of means any day now, the manner of his departure would likely become irrelevant. Rich and poor, oil and water. He knew what it was like. Nothing could remain the same.

His appetite decreased even more and he pushed away the plate. Not even the prospect of an earful of impassioned Spanish and a hefty wallop to the side of his arm would bring it back. He found himself unable to ignore the continued stare of the man across the table.

They held one another’s gaze just a little too long for either of them to mistake that it was more than personalities clashing. Ezra’s stomach turned over, a feeling like homesickness… or first night nerves.

“How about if I vouchsafe to keep you apprised of my intentions?” he asked at last.

“How about if you put some grub in your belly and then get out there to make sure that cousin of yours behaves himself?” The chair scraped noisily as Chris got his feet and stood looking down at him. “You’re no use to me if you ain’t sharp. Even less if you get sick.” He looked over to the bar. “Señorita?”

“Si?” She’d had her back turned but she spun around to face them.

“Ezra here says he wants another helping.”

No mistaking that Larabee, who didn’t find very much very funny, was damn pleased with himself as he left.

*

There seemed to be a whole lot of socializing going on in town the next day or two. Keeping folk well occupied, which had to be a good thing.

Nathan didn’t have to be around long to realize it. He had calls to make all over town so he was up and down the street, soon noticed who was talking to whom. Fitzgerald Holt was out and about too, in the center of most of the meetings and passings of the time of day. There was business going on, Nathan reckoned. The storekeepers and property owners were most keen to talk, it seemed. Either out on street corners, or more likely up on the platform in the saloon which seemed to have turned into Holt’s office.

“What all they got to yap about?” Vin wondered out loud when Nathan ran across him and they stood together watching yet another lengthy conversation taking place across the street, only this time between Holt and Josiah.

“Don’t rightly know.” Nathan shrugged, although he had been thinking on it. “Would seem they ain’t got a whole lot in common, but then there’s human nature bein’ contrary. Ain’t it true that opposites attract?”

Vin considered this for a while. “Could be. Could be Josiah don’t know what’s bein’ said behind his back.”

“Meanin’?”

Vin hooked his thumbs in his belt, leaned into the nearest upright. “You know, stuff about him not bein’ godly enough.”

“Well Ezra’s cousin ain’t alone in thinkin’ that. I heard folk complainin’ one minute he ain’t godly enough and then the next that he’s scarin’ the horses with his fire and brimstone.” Nathan grinned at him. “Reckon Holt and Josiah are enjoying tryin’ to set each other straight.”

“Reckon,” Vin said in the end although Nathan wasn’t sure Tanner really agreed. Wondering why, he had a notion that maybe the tracker had gotten wind of yesterday evening and Mary Travis gently allaying Holt’s fears of native outrages taking place every five minutes in this part of the world. There’d been a whole lot more socializing after that little exchange. Holt had appeared genuinely chastened and Mrs. Travis genuinely warm towards him. Well, Nathan surmised, Mary liked to educate… and then again he was a good-looking man and that couldn’t hurt.

Whatever Fitzgerald Holt’s qualities, there was certainly something about him that got town buzzing. Nathan had to admit he had some good stories up his sleeve. He could rival Maude with colorful tales of Ezra’s childhood shenanigans and there were plenty who lapped that up, JD included.

“Mr. Jackson,” Holt greeted him when he saw Nathan walking about town, tipping his hat with graceful civility although he didn’t make an effort to come talk to him. Nathan couldn’t quite decide whether to be bothered by that or not.

“What are you thinkin’, Buck?” he asked him next morning at breakfast, because Wilmington’s gregarious nature usually kept him abreast of all the important ebbs and flows. “You find Fitzgerald Holt a likeable man?”

“Likeable?” Buck assumed a world-weary expression. “Well, I ain’t had much occasion to find out about likeable. I know half the ladies of this town find him about the most interesting thing that’s passed before their eyes lately, that’s for sure.” He grinned. “Does a whole lot of talkin’, jus’ like Ezra does. Seems to think he knows everything about everything.”

“Vin doesn’t care for him.”

“Well,” Buck said carefully, “I daresay he and Vin don’t view the world quite the same way.” He gave Nathan a close look. “Why you askin’ anyhow? You had a problem with Holt?”

“No,” Nathan said, and that was true. He hadn’t.

“Tell you something.” Buck leaned towards him. “It’s lookin’ like he and Mary Travis are getting real friendly.”

“Friendly?”

“Ate dinner together last night.”

Nathan forked some egg into his mouth and chewed. After swallowing the food down with some coffee, and seeing that Buck looked thoughtful he asked, “Well, if he’s as likeable as folks are sayin’, that’s a good thing ain’t it?”

“Well sure, ’cept I reckon she could do even better.”

“Meaning you?”

Buck rolled his eyes. “You know who I mean.”

Nathan grinned around his next mouthful. He knew all right. Knew too that even if any of the rest of them had had so much as half a thought about Chris and Mary Travis, Buck was the only one likely to dare say so to Larabee’s face.

“Seen Ezra this morning?” was his next question.

Buck shook his head. “Big day,” he said meaningfully, and that was true.

The stage carrying the Holt family lawyer was due that evening.

Nathan was busy in the clinic most of the day but an hour before suppertime he left on an errand that took him through town. On his way back, he saw Fitzgerald Holt walking in his direction along the boardwalk. The man seemed slightly less relaxed than normal. So much he neglected to tip his hat, even though he noticed the healer was there. In fact, he seemed sufficiently caught up in his thoughts he crossed the street just as Nathan was about to open his mouth.

For a moment or two after that happened, Nathan paused where he was, standing with his back to the saloon doors. A little knot of something tightened in his stomach.

“Wouldn’t pay him no mind,” a voice said close by, and Nathan turned to see Josiah coming towards him.

“Sorry?”

“Holt – I wouldn’t pay him no mind.”

“I ain’t payin’ him no mind.”

Josiah reached his spot, looked over the batwings as if trying to decide whether to go in or not and then sat down on the top step of the boardwalk. “The man has some very enlightened thoughts,” he said. “And then again, he has some very unenlightened ones.”

Nathan didn’t want to appear like he was jumping all over the conversation and tried to be as casual as he could. “What’s he been sayin’?”

“This and that. He certainly knows what he thinks about economics.” Josiah took his hat off and wiped his brow. “Man has strong views on commerce, God, reconstruction and labor.”

“Huh,” Nathan said. “Anythin’ else?”

Josiah replaced his hat. “Vin heard him tellin’ some folks it was all very well standing for a negro healer when you didn’t have no other choice, but that real doctors should always be white.”

Nathan thought about that for a while. “Guess that ain’t no surprise.” It hurt, of course it did, dug into the old wounds like a skewer.

“Well,” Josiah said. “He’s not been shouting his mouth off, just sowing some seeds.”

Nathan thought some more. “I heard a lot of folks sayin’ he’d be good for this town.”

“Perhaps he would. Investment. A keen business brain.”

“Who has a keen business brain?” a familiar drawl interrupted. Josiah turned his head slightly but didn’t look right round. Nathan glanced sideways as Ezra emerged from the saloon, blinking in the sunlight.

“We were talking about your cousin,” Josiah said, pushing himself up to his feet. “He’s been making us laugh, and making us think.”

“Really.” Ezra was non-committal.

Josiah gave another look into the saloon and smacked his lips experimentally. He glanced briefly and thoughtfully between the two, and then pushed in through the doors, left them swinging behind him.

Nathan turned to Ezra, wondering what he was thinking. Aware of being observed, Ezra swung to meet the gaze with a questioning lift of his brows.

“Something on your mind, Nathan?”

“Seems your cousin has a lot to say about you, but you ain’t told us too much about him.”

“That would be because I hardly know him.”

“You don’t seem to like him.”

Ezra’s shoulder stiffened defensively. “And you do? A man like him, with a history like his?”

Nathan took a little breath. “You and I have had our times, Ezra. You’ve had that look in your eye, and that tone in your voice and I... well, we’ve judged each other. Reckon we know where we’re at with it all. But your cousin... I just don’t know what to make of him and you ain’t helpin’ much.”

Ezra’s eyes glittered faintly. “Please feel free to react to Mr. Holt any way you please. We share a bloodline, but I can assure you I feel not one jot of protectiveness towards him. In fact, quite the reverse.”

“He’s your family.”

Emotion crackled through Ezra’s whole demeanor. He bit out a reply at once, spoke as if struggling for self-restraint of some kind. Against anger, or regret perhaps. Nathan couldn’t exactly tell. “Who would see you back in servitude or dead before giving you the time of day. And certainly before giving you a vote.”

Nathan looked at him for a moment, wondering how to take it. But hell, it was true. He knew where he was at with Ezra by now. “They’re who they are is all.”

Ezra appeared to get himself under control. “Indeed, and sadly I can’t become unrelated,” he said.

“Some family you don’t get to choose, and then again, some you do.” Nathan slapped him lightly on the back of the shoulder. “All of ’em can test you to the limit at times.”

“True enough,” Ezra agreed, clearly relieved the tension between them had wound down and grateful to Nathan for making sure of it. There didn’t seem to be too much more to say and Ezra was just reaching in a familiar gesture towards his vest pocket for his cards when his eyes abruptly snapped to the left.

Nathan looked over too, alerted by the sound of feet rapidly approaching along the boardwalk.

It was Vin, coming at them from down towards the church.

“Gotta ride,” he said, slowing as he saw he had their attention.

He had that smooth forward momentum, a certain unequivocal command about him despite the quiet delivery and Nathan immediately began towards the saloon doors to fetch Josiah. He could see him leaning on the bar facing outwards.

Ezra flipped open his jacket to get a hand to his holster. “It’s the stage isn’t it?”

Vin looked back, apparently impressed at the clairvoyance. “Some shooting out on the road comin’ in from Eagle Bend. A coupla hands from the Lucky Three passed it on to JD. Kid just got in. Could be nothin’. Could be the stage.” Nathan turned back in time to see the mischievous look he cocked at Ezra. “Could be your money.”

“He’s not bringing it in his luggage,” Ezra deadpanned, peering into the barrel of his gun, but there was no time to think on it. Chris was yelling at them from further down the street and that was enough to get Ezra sprinting towards his horse, tethered under the trees by the stagecoach office.

There’d been shooting all right. Some more voices were shouting that now.

Both Josiah and Vin, who were strollers most of the time, had set off down the steps at a run. Nathan was aware of Fitzgerald Holt amongst the people watching as they all began to mount up. He seemed to have a lot to say to the folk gathering at Butterfields, and they were listening, too.

Then Holt stepped out from the group, made an approach to Ezra’s horse. Nathan saw his hand come out as if to make a touch to Ezra’s leg, family to family, showing anxiety and concern. Before he’d made contact, Ezra, fully aware of his proximity, swung his horse violently, turning the animal in a tight circle that caused its head to rear and dust to kick up. The move sent Holt backwards with his arm flung out to protect himself, almost felled him.

It was dangerous. Nathan had seen men injured bad like that, knocked in the head, trampled over and busted up.

“Ah hell,” he muttered, digging his knees into his horse to get him going.

“Ezra!” Chris was bellowing, his own mount close up to Ezra’s chestnut. Just for a split second they were staring wide-eyed at one another through the melee of dust and movement.

Nathan didn’t know what it meant. For all Ezra might not care for his cousin, Jackson didn’t know why he’d be so reckless around him. Didn’t know either why Chris was looking at him like that. Not angry and giving him orders to hurry the hell up, but like it mattered even more than that.

And, as so often, mind racing and heart sinking, most of all Nathan didn’t know what they were all riding into.

*

It was chaos.

The stage had been rolled over in a canyon five miles out of town and the bandits were still busy with it when they got there.

Folk in danger and shooting at shadows in the dark.

And somewhere in the middle of it, the Holt family lawyer on his first visit west.

Several hours after nightfall, when it was all over out on the road from Eagle Bend, Josiah and Buck carried a little old man in a scuffed suit along the dark street towards the livery. The two of them were breathing hard and splattered in drops of red.

Nathan thought he’d stemmed the free flow of blood from the wound while the lawyer was still passed out on the ground at the scene, and it worried him he’d missed something.

To complicate matters, all the way from the top of town to the livery he’d had Fitzgerald Holt’s voice in his ears, protesting what was happening. He’d been waiting for them when they made it back, as if he’d not moved from his position outside Butterfields all night. Nathan could hear his boots rapping on each tread as he followed them up the steps toward the clinic.

“I insist someone ride for a doctor...” The man was clearly rattled and didn’t intend to be ignored. “This isn’t right and proper... you people may be content to let a healer loose on your health, but Mr. Dixon deserves better care than that... I’m telling you, if Dixon dies in this room I’ll get the full force of the law to have that... to have Jackson arrested, you hear me?... ”

“Can hear you all right,” Buck muttered.

“Anyone else hurt?” Nathan was aware that two other passengers were being plied with free food in the restaurant, shaken but unharmed. He knew he’d seen Vin upright and dealing with the stagecoach team, but not the other three, not since beginning back to town. They’d all been separated in the dark for a while and the wounded man had been his priority.

“Don’t think so,” Buck owned, puffing as they staggered through the door.

Holt let loose a “By God...” when their burden was rolled on to the bed with more speed than care. Then Nathan heard further footsteps behind him and a new appeal. “Ezra, for the love of all that’s holy, how can you stand by and see our family friend manhandled by this unqualified charlatan?”

“You, sir, need to come outside and leave Mr. Jackson to his work.”

“I am not leaving our friend in the hands of this ni-”

There was a scuffling sound at the clinic entrance. As he stood to get better access to what he needed, Nathan caught a glimpse of the ruckus, and then of Buck using his superior height to bodily check Ezra while Josiah dragged Fitzgerald Holt backwards out the room with one arm.

Nathan just gritted his teeth and carried on. He was relieved to find the wound wasn’t as serious as he’d feared, but this lawyer was no youngster. He must have been sixty if he was day, and didn’t look very robust. At any rate, despite having his wound cleaned and stitched up, he didn’t even twitch.

With half an ear on what was going on out on the street, he continued his ministrations, finished up as he heard a familiar, chinking step coming up the stairs.

Chris appeared in the doorway. It was clear he wasn’t staying, had just come to check on things. He stood back, one arm leaning against the frame.

“Everyone all right?” Nathan demanded. Even in the swooping shadows from the lamp he could see Chris looked tense. The healer wasn’t surprised. They’d been pinned down for a spell out there, trying to keep the overturned coach and its occupants safe. The bandits were numerous and well armed, didn’t want to relinquish their spoils too easy.

“How’s he doing?” Chris said, indicating the bed.

“He’s holding his own for now, but he ain’t woken up. And you ain’t answered my question.”

“Everyone’s all right. Vin rounded up JD, made sure he didn’t try and follow the bastards on his own, and now Buck’s keeping an eye on Ezra.” There was a pause. “Hear he tried to deck his cousin.”

They shared a thin smile. “Reckon he’s wanted to since he first laid eyes on him.”

“He ain’t alone in that.”

Nathan moved away from the bed, half holding a finger to his lips. He joined Chris out on the balcony, pulled shut the door. “Won’t be able to tell too much until the mornin’ but for sure there ain’t going to be no meeting about wills and money for a day or two.”

“I’ll pass that along.”

“And you can pass along that Mr. Holt ain’t welcome up here, or Ezra come to that.”

“Neither of ’em?”

Nathan sighed. “Not if they’re gonna be scrapping, and figure they’ve been circling each other so close, one of ’em comes here the other one won’t be far behind. Can’t be doin’ with it.”

Chris nodded, understanding, far as he could. “All right then.” He seemed worried. More worried than he ought to be about a man he didn’t know, as bad hurt as he might be. More worried than he ought to be about a couple of cousins who weren’t the best of friends.

When Nathan went back inside, he wondered about that look he’d seen seen earlier in the day. Chris and Ezra, frozen in a moment, like there was a whole world of things going on between them.

He took up position by the bed, leaning in close to check the patient’s color, see if he was anywhere near the surface.

Holding vigil gave him a lot of time to think. About how damn relieved he was that he and his friends were still alive. How damn scary it was when enemies you couldn’t see were firing rifles at your head. And whether Chris and Ezra getting along would make things more peaceful, or less.

*

Town hadn’t settled down much once Chris left the clinic.

When he got down to the street, a figure rose to its feet from the opposite boardwalk and Vin joined him. They took a walk, in silence at first, along main from the livery to the church and then back.

The wrecked coach still stood outside Butterfields, one wheel askew and riddled in bullet-holes. Vin had done a damn good job getting it back in one piece. Chris felt a nudge.

“He dies, that mean Ezra don’t get no money?”

“Hell should I know? You on watch?”

“Reckon. Town feels lively.”

It did, too.

“Take it easy,” Chris advised and Vin’s teeth flashed at him in the semi-dark.

As he carried on down the street again towards the boarding house and some rest, he saw Buck acknowledge him from outside the main saloon. He was holding a mug of beer and watching the street. Chris made a signal for him to stand down for the moment and watched him nod and turn to go back inside.

A barrage of noise came from inside Digger Dave’s. Chris didn’t want to go in. Instead he peeled off down the side of the building, into an alley that provided a shortcut between the two main blocks of town. Halfway down he heard rapid footsteps coming up behind him.

His hand moved at once to his gun but a low voice stayed him.

“Easy now, it’s only me.”

It was only Ezra.

“What’s goin’ on? You all right?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?” Ezra slowed as he drew up close. His eyes were only just visible, dark in his pale face. He wore no hat and he looked tired and dusty, seemed ill at ease. Chris wanted to brush down his jacket sleeves for him, calm the skittish movements of his hands.

“What you here for?” he asked.

“I saw you walkin’,” Ezra began, “and I thought I’d…”

“Ain’t never a good plan to creep around town after dark. Any man who knows one end of his gun from the other is twitchy as hell.”

“You know...” Ezra began again. His voice sounded thick and he reached out a hand as if to snag Chris’s sleeve. “I wasn’t sure... it sounded like...” The hand drifted back down to his side. “Never mind.”

“You mean out there?” Chris made a vague gesture into the night. His heart had begun to thump and he could feel strange prickles running up the back of his neck. A faint breeze moved the dusty hair on Ezra’s head. Although he knew such a move would signify intimacy Chris had a strong instinct to reach out and touch, just for the feel of it.

“Well.” Ezra uttered one of those nervous laughs that to Chris usually signified he was about to begin messing with the truth. “Shooting in the dark without hitting your associates... it’s not an easy skill.”

“We did good.” Good enough, perhaps he should have said. They didn’t need the undertaker quite yet. Chris still wasn’t clear what, if any, relationship Ezra had with the old lawyer lying unconscious under Nathan’s ever-watchful care. He’d gotten a firm impression of long-time association from Holt, but Ezra hadn’t even seemed familiar with the name. Which would make sense for someone so far from being considered part of the family circle.

Seemed some things never changed.

“But I thought...” Once again Ezra trailed off, his usual ability to talk through any situation apparently dying on his lips.

Chris narrowed his eyes and took a step forward. “What did you think?”

“Just for a moment, it all went quiet your side and Buck was cursin’ and I couldn’t see.” Ezra touched the back of his hand to his mouth. “I didn’t know if you were all right.”

Now he was closer Chris could see the dirtied surface of Ezra’s vest moving up and down as he breathed. His hair moved again in the night air and the light coming from the back of the hotel lit up one side of his face and neck, moonlight pale. From out of nowhere Chris wanted to touch a knuckle to the junction between the sleek skin of cheekbone and unevenly stubbled jaw, to feel the rough and the smooth in one.

“You were worried?” he couldn’t help asking.

“Manifestly.”

Irritation blossomed in his gut and Chris suppressed a grimace. That was what Ezra did. He opened his mouth and spouted words he didn’t need to spout when a simple yes or no would do. Chris could never decide if he was just being a smartass or if it was natural. And yet, however irritating it was, like most of Ezra’s habits there had come to be something almost comforting about it. Just like there was in the faint, unexpected tang of spice from his hair – the tang of unnecessary money. It was a scent you only ever caught if you were bent real close to growl some warning in his ear or check if he was alive.

Chris knew why Ezra was worried. On the surface they were… friends of some sort, fighting partners, brothers in arms. Moments of pure danger always underlined such feelings. Hell, Chris got ’em himself, all the damn time, with Vin, with Buck... with all of them. But there’d been more than enough going on in his digestive tract and the fevered workings of his secret mind lately for him to believe there was something else.

“Worried more than usual?” He kept his tone casual, which he guessed was a little unfair. A small line of doubt appeared between Ezra’s eyes and the vest hitched.

A noise from out on the main street, a door and some voices, made Chris move, walking them both two steps into the gloom. It was decided enough he heard Ezra’s back crunch against the clapboard and a soft, surprised huff of air. And then they were pressed together in the shadows.

“Really,” Ezra began on a faint breath.

Not even sure of his own motives, Chris was totally surprised by what followed. Instead of a mouthful of complaint about being manhandled, eager hands snaked around his back, pulling him closer, curving round his ass, the touch rough and suggestive. Lips, warmly damp, sank on to his. Without a second thought, he opened his mouth.

Ezra’s tongue surged in and Chris felt the breath stop in his chest. A hectic heat spread between his hips and down through his lower back. Giving in to it he let his body go heavy, leaned his forearms hard into the wood to get purchase.

Shit. He’d forgotten this, being body to body and mouth to mouth.

Or maybe hadn’t forgotten, maybe this was just something new. There wasn’t a touch of sweetness about it, not like with Maria or Lydia. Or Sarah. This tasted different, made his heart beat different. Wetter than with a woman, wetter and messier, and hell… so damn arousing, so damn quickly, he was already hard in his pants, ready to spill.

Chris pulled back, took a few harsh breaths. The taste of Ezra was painted round his mouth, and all he wanted was more of it. He wanted those hands, strong from precision movement, still stroking and curling around his ass.

Jesus God... what the hell was wrong with him?

“Ezra,” he said, shocked to hear the roughness in his own voice. He couldn’t stop grinding his hips forwards, even though the friction and the pressure was almost unbearable. Each stuttering movement mimicked the rhythm Ezra’s hands had already set up.

A small, ineffectual voice was telling him, in the very back of his mind, that this shouldn’t be happening.

But hell, Chris had never much listened to conscience, or common sense, or whatever it was that piped up from time to time. It didn’t change anything. This barrier they’d broken down, they wouldn’t just be able to put it back up again, whatever happened next.

A scattered inhalation came from Ezra. “I thought you... I want... I want to...” His words came out all shaky, like he had no mastery over his tongue.

Chris caught the bottom lip, plumped and rosy, between his own, sucked on it so hard he knew it would hurt. The heat in his back and belly and groin intensified. His arms had come off the clapboard wall and he began to pull at the precise, neat buttons, hearing each one pop open. Ezra was tugging the ends of his shirt free of his waistband and then sliding hands against bare skin, up the planes of his back and then down again, fingertips delving as far as they could reach under the waistband. They were the fingertips of his imagination. Shivers of cold and excitement ran up and down Chris’s spine. He wanted to feel the chill of his own hands meeting smooth, heated flesh. Wrenching his mouth away again, he shucked his way into the ruffled shirt. As he wrestled the two halves of fine-textured cotton apart, light caught the surface of Ezra’s exposed chest.

It was fine. In definition, in texture, just like he’d guessed. Fine, damn fine.

Chris stroked around the goose-bumped ribcage, up over Ezra’s shoulders, pushing back the shirt as far as he could, further than he needed. Already peaked by the cold air, both nipples stiffened under the insistent brush of his fingers, made him want to bite on them.

He kissed instead, each one in turn, flicked them with the tip of his tongue, sucked hard until Ezra was arching towards him, cursing denials through his teeth.

Then came the sound of voices again. Chris lifted his head, dragged one hand up and clamped it fiercely over Ezra’s mouth. He pressed his full body weight against him, leaned in so he was breathing hotly into an ear, feeling their heartbeats thump between walls of bone and muscle and cloth.

Ezra immediately became silent. Within a second he was obedient and immobile. Yes, and still. So still, like a statue.

Hiding, subterfuge and secrecy—these were his trademarks, ones they denigrated him for at times, but Chris was grateful for them now. He had the sudden delicious notion Ezra would make a dangerously vocal lover, figured such sudden quiet took a degree of self-control and experience.

To speak now, even a whisper, was stupid, but he had to.

Ezra was panting soft and damp against his palm. He was unmistakably hard against Chris’s thigh and Chris shut his eyes.

“Swear to God,” he managed, “if I could get down on my knees right now and get my mouth around you... Jesus, Ezra, I want us to fuck so bad.”

He could only hope it was mutual, but he didn’t think he was wrong on this. Just from the press of their bodies, without seeing his eyes, or hearing one word coming from his mouth, he could tell Ezra had imagined it just like he had. And the fact wouldn’t change even if half the town came parading down the alley now and found them here like this.

As the voices faded again into the general noise of Digger Dave’s, Chris let his hold gradually relax. Allowed to move, Ezra’s hands had started to travel up and down his back again, but lighter this time, reassuring.

“Been with a man before.” Chris pulled back so he was looking right at him, got all the admission out as quick as he could before he lost his nerve. “It was nothin’ special.”

“Must have been the wrong man then.”

“Must have.”

A short pause followed. “You could come to my room.” The whispered drawl was familiar, although the words were unexpected. “Or else I could come to yours.”

Chris tried to get a better look at the face in the dim light. The ache of thwarted desire had crept into his bones. “You want that?”

Ezra slid his hands free and the loss of contact was a shock. He pushed Chris away a little and looked down at himself and his gaping shirt. “I’m guessing you know the answer, since I haven’t put a bullet in your gut.”

“You were on your way somewhere.”

“Just to collect my cards from the saloon. And then to bed.”

Chris swallowed. “I can’t come to the saloon,” he said.

Ezra buttoned his shirt quickly, left the vest open and fastened his jacket over it. He shifted, adjusting the front of his suit pants delicately. “I’ll come to you. If it’s safe.”

“It won’t be safe.”

“No.” Ezra positioned his gun-belt, took a look up the alley towards the street. The noise of voices was as strong as ever, but they weren’t coming any nearer. There were no threatening shadows at the end of the block. He tilted his head, grinned almost in spite of himself. “This is because I’m about to become rich, isn’t it? You have revealed yourself as a gold-digger.”

“Don’t fuckin’ call me that, not if you’re gonna stick your tongue in my mouth like you just goddamn well did. And you know what I think about you and money. It’s a bad mix.”

Ezra just laughed, still breathless. He swept a rapid, appreciative look over Chris, as if he were seeing him anew. His eyes were full of a kind of warmth and pleasure Chris didn’t ever remember seeing before. It was an unexpectedly fine feeling to realize that he was the reason. “I’ll be seeing you then,” Ezra said, the smooth tone belying whatever emotion might be raging around inside him. “I suggest you walk the other way.”

Chris began to tuck his own disarranged shirt haphazardly back into his pants. He wanted to seal their farewell somehow, but he felt oddly self-conscious now. Not minutes before he’d have gladly turned Ezra round and crushed him up against the wall, taken him as rough and hard as he could get away with. With no inhibition at all he would have whispered dirty promises in his ear, would have revealed the depth of his longing in as many ways as he could. But now an awkwardness had descended that he hadn’t bargained on and he just let Ezra go, squaring his shoulders into the night and disappearing.

Allowing a span of seconds to get his breathing under control, Chris set off into the deeper dark too, reached the narrow end of the alley and turned left, aiming to walk behind the stores and across the back of the jailhouse before turning back on to the main street. As he rounded the corner there he nearly fell over a figure standing close into the wall.

“Jesus!” he yelped. “Vin! What the hell you doing?”

Tanner was little more than a silhouette. But Chris felt a robust grip around his arm.

“Careful, cowboy.”

“You fuckin’ spyin’ on me?” Resent and anger flooded him at the notion, but the response was laconic.

“Nope. Watchin’ yer back is all.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Just what it says.”

Chris got control of his fury, knew some of it was guilty conscience. He felt it was important to keep his emotions, all of them, in check. “Tell me why.”

“Cousin Holt’s been sniffin’ around. He was out there on the street a while back. Lookin’ for Ezra I reckoned.” Tanner paused. “Reckon he found him.”

A cold lump settled in Chris’s stomach. “Found him where?”

“Lookin’ up that alley you just came from. Starin’ real close like he was tryin’ to make somethin’ out. When he moved off, I came to find what he was lookin’ at.”

“And did you?”

Vin was calm. His grip on Larabee’s arm hadn’t lessened. “Reckon I did.”

“Shit.”

The blue eyes held no censure. No surprise either. “Ain’t my affair,” he said. “But if cousin Holt saw what I think he saw then you really need to be careful.”

“Shit,” Chris said again. He was wondering just what the hell Vin had seen, never mind Holt.

“I mean it. You and Ezra.”

“All right.” Chris gave a pull to get his arm out of the hold. Vin let him go. “All right.”

“It was pretty dark.”

“What?”

“Down the alley. You were in the shadows.”

“But you had a good look?” Chris couldn’t keep the barb from his voice.

There was a short silence. “I knew it was you. Both of you. But that’s because I know... what you sound like. Couldn’t see much.”

Chris wondered if ‘much’ meant Ezra splayed against the clapboard wall with his shirt open and Chris mouthing his chest.

“Ah hell.”

“He could do more than make some trouble, Chris. Man’s gotta hold of this town. There’s plenty think he’s just the kind we need around here. His money and his character.”

“He gone to his bed?”

“Well he ain’t out on the street no more. Maybe gone to ground, lessen he’s gone to find Ezra.”

Fear spiked through Chris. “Shit. We need to hold this together until Ezra’s got his goddamn money. You ain’t gonna breathe a word, right?”

“What’s ta breathe? I didn’t see nothin’.”

“All right then.” Chris gave him a sharp look. “So you don’t need to patrol around me no more. I ain’t goin’ to do nothin’ else foolish tonight.”

“And Ezra?”

Uncomfortable under the keen blue gaze, Chris shuffled his shoulders. “He ain’t that stupid.”

“Not sure brains has a whole lot to do with it.” Vin hefted his gun. “Don’t worry, I ain’t planning on followin’ you around. Reckon you should get back to the boardin’ house. Had a long night.”

Chris remembered again how confused and dangerous it had been out there with the crippled stagecoach, people to protect and bullets flying through the dark. A sudden fatigue tightened his bones.

“You too, Vin,” he said, just like he might have done any other night meeting on patrol.

Vin tipped his hat then. Just like any other night.

“Sure.” He began to shrink away

Chris walked out on to the street. The fires were burning strong and the noise in Digger Dave’s was as raucous as ever. As he moved along past the other quiet buildings he gave a half glance at the saloon, seeing the light in the upstairs room at the front.

A slight curve tweaked one side of his mouth, despite the tension he felt. He had a pretty good idea of what Ezra was taking with him to bed right now— same as him, the thoughts tumbling through his head and sparking nerves hot and cold under his skin. He felt it too, dangerous and unsettling. Good though, warm and steady and tight, wound so close around his ribs and chest all of a sudden that he wondered if he’d ever breathe properly again.

*

The bad feeling that crept over him all the way to his room stopped Ezra making good on what the encounter with Chris had left.

Without that feeling he’d have dealt with the raging hard-on quick as he could, soon as he was through the door. He wasn’t averse to doing it in front of the mirror either, imagining Chris, just as he’d said, on his knees.

As it was he felt too edgy. Nervous. Somehow he wasn’t surprised by the light rap on his door when he’d done no more than hang his jacket and unbuckle his gunbelt, even though he was pretty sure it wasn’t Larabee. He went for his handgun right away, had it out of the holster and leveled at the panels in a moment.

“Cousin,” came a voice from outside.

That was more than enough to shrivel every functioning part of him, never mind his cock.

Giving it a few more seconds and then deeply cautious, he opened the door.

Holt, a dark, upright figure that reminded Ezra uncomfortably of the military police, didn’t appreciate the gun. He looked at it, then at the gun belt and holster which hung over Ezra’s crooked elbow.

“What the Devil? Is that strictly necessary?” he said, sibilant as an adder.

“I’m going to bed,” Ezra replied irritably. “What do you want?”

“To speak.”

Unwillingly Ezra opened the door for him to walk in. Then he shut it behind him, re-holstering the gun.

“Speak then,” he said. He’d backed up and sat stiffly on the chair by the window, as far from Holt as he could, draping the gun belt over his lap.

“I know what you are.”

Holt had put his hands behind his back and Ezra remembered he’d been Captain Holt at one time. Bearer of a sabre and recipient of military honors no less. His own happily unremarkable stint in the artillery, ramming black powder and shells into the breech of a thirty-pound canon, couldn’t much compare.

“And what’s that?” he asked.

“You’re the worst kind of… dear God… you’re not even what I’d call a man. And I’ve seen you, here, tonight, in this town.” Holt twisted his face. “I’ve seen you, and who you were with.”

If panic suffused Ezra at that point, he hoped he hadn’t shown it.

“I don’t know what you think you’ve seen, but if that’s all you’ve come to say then I believe this interview is already terminated.”

“The people in this town will hang you for a dog.”

“Oh really. You’d be surprised what currency I have.”

“It will amount to nothing, not once they know.”

“And when precisely are you planning this revelation, whatever it is? While you’re engaged in one of your pretend business meetings?”

Holt rocked back on his heels. “Oh I’ll let you receive your letter and your bequest,” he said.

“Why _are_ you here?” Ezra was thinking it through even as he spoke. “What on earth would bring someone like you out here?” He tried to read some truth in the eyes staring warily into his.

Holt kept the eye contact. There was something of the young Fitzgerald in there still, despite the watchfulness. Something of that confidence and sense of entitlement, which now, as then, Ezra dearly wanted to dislodge, by whatever means.

“Frankly,” he said, “I’m ashamed of myself.” A half-frown of doubt creased Holt’s brow. “Because I find I know exactly how your mind is working. Might you be thinking of holding my inheritance hostage somehow? You thinking I’ll hand over my share as payment for you keeping your mouth shut?”

Unlacing his hands from behind his back, Holt tugged at one cuff. His neck stiffened. “I don’t need your money,” he said. “You can fritter it away on whatever the hell you like for all I care. But believe me, there’ll come a time when I can bring everything to an end, when it will be only right for me to tell what I know about you.” He paused. “And about Mr. Chris Larabee.”

Ezra sat forward, letting the butt of his handgun come to rest against his palm. “Don’t you threaten me,” he said softly. “And especially, don’t you dare threaten him.”

“Or?” Holt tried for defiant but his voice sounded about the same shade of pale as his face. He was staring at the gun belt and Ezra’s hand touching the handle of the Remington pistol.

“Or,” Ezra said, “I will goddamn well kill you.”

It would be a pleasure, he might have added, to find an excuse. Even one that a court of law wouldn’t find very mitigating.

“Always,” Holt murmured, taking a short step back and reaching for the door handle, without for one moment taking his eyes off Ezra’s hand. “You always were a mouthy little bastard.”

If Holt’s thoughts, even for a second, were back in his childhood room, the drapes drawn, the door locked, he didn’t show it. He was only thinking about now, this moment of threat. Ezra wondered if Holt even acknowledged the memory anymore or if that was his alone. To do with as he pleased, or to let fester in silence, private and undisturbed.

“Go on,” he said, hand tightening against the metal. “Get out.”

Back then Holt had turned away to fasten his clothes in an odd moment of propriety. He’d been flushed and triumphant, holding one fist under Ezra’s nose before he shoved him outside. ‘We’re done,’ he’d said.

They hadn’t been, and they probably weren’t now.

Ezra let him go, watched him slide out of the door and leave it ajar. Unmoving for a while he remained in the chair, listening to the footsteps tapping swiftly down the hallway. He swallowed slowly several times, lifted a sleeve to rub across his brow, waiting for his cantering heartbeat to slow down.

Then he rose to his feet, threw the belt and the gun on the bed. He crossed to the door and pushed it shut, hard, with one foot. Retrieving his flask from the inside pocket of the jacket he’d been wearing, he unscrewed the lid, took several large gulps. Finally he re-seated himself by the window and listened to the sound of the street.

Hours he sat there, gun to hand, just in case it was needed.

*

Chris didn’t get much rest either, even though he had a comforting sense that Vin had been patroling round town most of the night.

“Well you don’t look like you slept.” Buck, who he met over eggs and coffee at the restaurant, was curious more than concerned, and jumping to the kind of conclusions Buck always jumped to. “It wasn’t Miz Travis was it? Finally? She was lookin’ a little peaked herself this mor-“

“Buck…”

Buck gave in pretty quick. Chris had to hand it to him, he was good at recognizing limits. Chris’s limits, anyhow.

“Okay, okay… go on then, stud, what was it?”

“Lotta bellyachin’ at Dave’s.”

“You were keeping the peace at Dave’s in the middle of the night?”

“No. Just know there was a lot of fuss.”

Buck scrunched his face. He was probably about to point out that he didn’t know how Chris could have heard that, being so far away and all, but something seemed to stop him. “Heard how the old boy’s doin’ this morning?” he asked instead.

Chris swallowed his coffee, too keyed-up to eat much. “Nope. You?”

“Well I’m guessin he ain’t cashed in his chips yet. Saw Nathan and he weren’t runnin’ for the undertaker.”

“So that’s good news then.”

“Yep, specially for Ezra.”

Chris debated how to react. He wished Buck and the others would make up their minds, decide if they were going to back Ezra against Holt, or just jab at him about the money.

“Hell, Buck, some of us nearly got our heads shot off last night.”

Buck nodded. He’d have known how close it was. Chris even remembered seeing his face, white in the darkness. “I was goddamn well there,” he said. “Reckon Ezra thought you’d gone down. Same as I did.” He blew out his cheeks, giving himself a moment. “Don’t mean he ain’t thinkin’ about his money again this mornin’.”

“Maybe. How about Holt? You seen him?”

“He’s looking for someone to drive him over to the old Royal spread. Seems to have made friends with half the landowners in the territory on his way through.”

“Sure makin’ himself at home.”

“Seems to be all business.” Buck was wry. “Wouldn’t trust him to play by the rules.”

Chris once more found his thoughts, although not his eyes, straying over to the room above the saloon. He knew he needed to find Ezra. “You mean with the money?”

“With anything,” Buck said darkly. “Didn’t mind him at first, now I ain’t so sure.” He frowned. “And now where you goin’?”

Chris hadn’t even reached the saloon side of the street when he saw Ezra coming out, turning in the direction of the boarding house.

“You coming to find me?” he hailed him, breaking into a jog. Ezra stopped at once, waited to be caught up to.

Chris had wondered if maybe when he saw Ezra this morning he’d feel different somehow. Would regret what he’d done and what he’d said last night. But one look in his eyes and he didn’t regret a goddamn thing, no matter what was going to come of it.

“Need to let you know,” Ezra said, schooling his voice since there were people passing close by, but not able to keep the heat from his expression. “We may have a problem.”

Chris moved in close as they were passed on the boardwalk. Someone tipped their hat in apology at having to crowd them.

“That problem got anythin’ to do with your cousin?”

“He came to see me...”

“I’d imagine so.”

Chris stepped back again. They stood looking in opposite directions for a while.

“Can’t do anything about it now,” Ezra said. “He knows.”

“Vin told me.”

Suspicion flashed across Ezra’s face. “Vin?”

“He was out and about last night too.” Chris hesitated and then plowed on. “Warned us to be real careful and I reckon he’s right.”

Ezra didn’t say anything, just carried on staring out at the street, one restless hand tapping on his thigh. “Vin…” he said again at last, as if trying to weigh up what it meant.

“Yep, and he reckons the others oughta know too, just for safety.”

Ezra’s head snapped round. “Well hell, why not just put an announcement in the Clarion?” he said testily.

“It may come to it,” Chris said. “You just watch your back and keep your ears open. Ain’t no tellin’ what he’ll do.”

“Fitzgerald Holt doesn’t act on impulse, you should know that. He’s fond of the long plan, keeping people guessing his intentions, not showing his hand.” Ezra gave a bitter laugh. “And yes, I daresay it’s a family trait.”

“You ain’t like him.” Chris was gruff. He knew it was time to part company, not stand around in public looking like such good friends, but it was damn hard to do.

“And he hates me.” Ezra kept the statement brisk.

Chris wasn’t going to ask if it was because of his unknown paternity, or something that happened long ago between them. He was hopeful Ezra would tell him by choice, when he was ready.

“Looks like it goes both ways,” was what he said and Ezra looked at him sharply, as if he thought he had to justify himself.

“His father thought I had potential. Don’t think Holt ever forgave me for that, and you can be assured I took care to use it against him at every opportunity.”

“Don’t matter, Ezra.” Only Chris knew it probably did matter, very much, one way or another. But this wasn’t the time to discuss it

“We should probably keep away from each other,” Ezra said at last, unwillingly. “Until he’s gone.”

“What about when your money comes through?”

“What about it?”

“You gonna keep away from me then?”

Ezra didn’t answer that direct. “Last night,” he said straightening his hat on his head, ready to walk away. He brushed close against Chris as he stepped off the boardwalk. “It really was something.”

*

It took a couple of days for the Atlanta attorney at law to recover his wits and make up some of the blood he’d lost. Town was quiet and Ezra and Holt seemed to take some pains not to run across one another. Mr. Dixon, once he was awake and sensible, turned out to be a querulous old man, but Nathan reckoned that might have been the shock.

After that no more time was wasted. On the road to recovery or not, he was helped up from the bed in the clinic to dress for business, and escorted slowly down the steps with his leather briefcase and into the waiting care of Fitzgerald Holt. Chris and the others watched his emergence from across the street, and shortly after saw Ezra join them, jittery as hell. Then the lawyer and the cousins proceeded into the hotel for the reading of the final portion of Henning Beauregard’s last will and testament.

It was a sunny blue day and not much to keep them inside, even if certain lives weren’t about to be changed across the way.

“Don’t feel quite right,” Vin said eventually. “Sittin’ here waitin’. Ain’t none of our affair whether Ezra’s rich.”

“You got that right.” Buck chortled. “Ain’t like he’ll be givin’ the likes of us any donations.”

“Folk round here will look at him different.” JD sounded faintly worried for Ezra’s security and Chris was kind of proud of him for thinking things past the usual conclusions.

“I do believe him more than capable of looking after his own money.” Josiah was dirt dry.

“Least Holt will be moving on.” Nathan gave what could have been a reluctant sigh. “I won’t be sorry to see that, even if it means Ezra goes with him.”

“Ezra ain’t goin’ with him.”

Chris sensed several heads turn.

They weren’t so sure. But not confident enough to challenge Larabee’s assertion, not one delivered in such a brusque tone. Quiet, without making too much of it, all their attention turned back to the hotel.

Not fifteen minutes after they’d gone inside, the hotel screen door flapped open and the upright figure of Fitzgerald Holt emerged, followed by the bent figure of the old lawyer. They stood at the top of the steps talking closely for a half a minute and then Holt nodded, held out an arm to assist the notary down on to the street. They’d only just reached the hard-packed ground when the door banged again and Ezra came out.

Even at a distance he looked perplexed.

Chris first thought was that the sum was bigger than expected. His stomach twisted at the idea. The bigger the fortune, the less likely Ezra would stick around. Simple math.

Holt looked up at his cousin from the street. It was long, calculated look, enough to make Chris feel queasy. Ezra turned away from it, began down the boardwalk towards the saloon, then stopped. His gaze was drawn to where they were all sitting. The expression on his face was one of a man who didn’t know quite what to do with himself. There was a tinge of something else too. Chris couldn’t be sure if it was directed at them or himself or his cousin. Just that it was bruising.

Josiah made an impatient noise, as if he’d just remembered that all of this was none of his business and he felt bad about being here.

“Could be like we thought.” Buck was considering, and Chris wished he’d take a leaf out of Josiah’s book, instead of treating this like a penny dreadful plot unfolding before his eyes. “Looks like he’s on his way outa town.”

Sure enough, Ezra continued his progress along towards the livery stable, walking swift and decided.

Chris got to his feet and began down the steps. He didn’t need to explain where he was going.

He knew what he’d find, too, when he’d followed on.

“Where d’you think you’re going?”

Ezra staging any kind of disappearing act had never been less than contentious between them.

Straightening from the far side of the stall where his horse always stood, Ezra looked over its back at him. His mouth was a stiff line. “I don’t think I’m going anywhere. I know I am. Out of this town. Anywhere he isn’t.”  
“Things didn’t go well?”

Chris had been wondering how to ask the question. ‘How much?’ seemed kind of rude, whichever way it had gone.

Ezra’s face was worryingly impassive. “I have received my inheritance,” he confirmed and tapped his jacket pocket. “Just not sure what I... I need to reflect.”

“Get on out to my place.”

“What for?”

Chris felt one fist curl.

“Mend some goddamn fences, whaddya think?”

A faint smile breezed over Ezra’s features. “All right,” he said. “And what will you tell our friends?”

Stupidly it warmed Chris’s stomach to hear Ezra say ‘our friends’ and his fist uncurled. He wasn’t sure he’d ever heard him refer to the group as such, not without a painfully sarcastic twist to his voice.

“Well if I tell ’em you’ve just ridden out into the wilderness to... reflect... "

“It won’t be long before Mr. Tanner will be saddling up to rescue me from my own idiocy.”

“Somethin’ like that. I’ll think of a story. You stay put out there and wait for me, y’ hear?”

“So masterful.”

“I’ll give you masterful.” The words dropped out before he could catch them.

Ezra’s eyes glinted. “I look forward to accommodating you.”

Chris just shook his head, not prepared to go any further. Bandying words and yet staying this properly far apart, was powerfully frustrating. He didn’t think he’d have the tolerance for too much of it the way he suspected Ezra might. Stepping away he pulled open the doors so Ezra could lead his horse outside.

“Careful,” he said and Ezra smiled as if it was a novelty.

Once he’d mounted up and swung away in the direction of out of town, Chris wove a casual way back to the others, finding only Buck and JD still in place.

“He didn’t tell me nothin’,” Chris said right away. “Seemed kinda wound up, so I sent him off to Eagle Bend to cool his heels. Keep him outa Holt’s way. He’ll be back in a day or two.”

JD let out a whistle.

“The old guy was wheezing like a pair of bellows but Holt won’t let Nathan near him.”

“And where’s he at?”

“ Gone down to the stage, said he was buying a ticket outa here, soon as he can.”

“Ezra all right?” Buck asked.

“Like I said. He’s wound up.”

“Maybe comin’ into money ain’t such an easy thing,” JD said as if he’d just now thought of the notion. Buck gave him a little shove.

“Well I’d say it has its complications,” he agreed, “but on the other hand, I’d say it’d make a man very appealin’ to the ladies.”

Chris snorted. Grandpa had advocated holding on to your money tight and not giving another soul, particularly a potential spouse, so much as a damn sniff.

“Yeah,” he said, “not to mention making a man very appealin’ to every knucklehead in the territory with a gun and a grievance.”

Buck sobered down at that.

“Ain’t common knowledge is it?” JD asked.

“Old Holt ain’t exactly kept his trap shut.”

“Should you have let Ezra go off on his own?”

“He’ll be all right. ’Sides, he ain’t got hold of any of it yet, just the letter. Won’t do nobody no good to jump him for that.” He heaved his shoulders, not liking the possibility.

“Don’t fret,” Buck said. “Day or two, everything will be back to normal. Just like before.”

Chris doubted that.

*

“Have any of you gentlemen seen my cousin?”

They were sought out in the saloon later in the day. Five of them had drifted together, unsettled. It was something of a surprise that Holt was on the search for Ezra. Now everything was done and dusted with the lawyer and given the lack of cordial relations up to now, it was hard to think of one single more thing the two might have to say to one another. They didn’t know what was bothering Ezra so bad about him but it didn’t seem like a trifle.

“He’s outa town.” Buck was airy, waving his beer mug around.

Holt let his gaze rest momentarily on Vin, and for several undecided seconds on Nathan. Then, shrugging, he pulled out a chair, and sat himself down. Vin straightened from his sprawl, set his feet on the floor, getting ready to leave at any second.

“Well I can’t say I’m entirely surprised to hear that.” Holt looked around the table expectantly.

Nobody spoke.

Holt wasn’t bothered by the discouraging silence. Not in the least. Inez had made a move towards him from behind the bar with a bottle in her hand but he waved her away.

“It’s not down to me to tell you what transpired of course.” He ran a hand across the knotty surface of the table, frowned at the feel of it. Then he looked around. “And Mr. Larabee? He out of town too?”

“No,” Vin said at once. “He ain’t.”

Still none of the others spoke. They didn’t look at Vin either, gave no impression they were surprised by his words or his delivery. Chris had loaded a kit-bag full of tools and told them he was going to work at his place for a while. It was not an unusual happening. He’d ridden out not forty-five minutes ago and they’d all seen him go. Even so Vin felt them all fall in behind his bare-faced lie, to a man.

“Coffee,” Holt said abruptly, angling a jerk of his chin towards Inez. “I’ll take some coffee.”

“Señor.” She banged the bottle down on the bar.

Buck flicked a look at her, then back to his beer mug.

“While you gentlemen of the law are assembled…” Holt inclined his head in a mock-polite manner. “Tell me, how well – exactly – do you know my cousin Standish?”

Vin hadn’t heard the man use Ezra’s given name but once, although he figured the same was true the other way round too. He’d assumed that was just how fancy Southern folks talked but there was enough bite to Holt’s speech that now he wasn’t quite so sure. Nothing to do with manners and polite society and all that shit, just plain, old-fashioned loathing. Vin didn’t have to deal with family things anymore, excepting those that came with the other six. He felt glad of that. Seemed like blood family could weigh down your heart something fierce.

“Well enough,” Nathan said in response to the insinuating question. Holt didn’t even look at him. He barely reacted, as if no words had been spoken. Instead he sat there with a questioning look on his face as if still awaiting a reply. Vin allowed himself to meet Nathan’s eyes, was relieved to find Jackson looked outwardly calm.

“Why you askin’?” Buck had that deadly pleasant look to his face. Vin knew he’d felt the threat to both Ezra and Chris, even though he didn’t know the source of it.

“There’s undoubtedly a great deal of history of which you are unaware.”

“Undoubtedly.” Josiah was not encouraging him to expand.

“Never mind the family... business. Never mind the inheritance. You gentlemen really have no idea what kind of a man he is. If I was to tell the good people of this town what I know to be true of him...”

“You ain’t gonna say one word.” Vin had his hand on his gun butt. “Not one word, you understand? Iffen you do, we may just have ta arrest you. Lock you up.” He knew the others were having difficulty following him on this one but they weren’t wavering, at least not openly.

“Is that redskin law?”

“Frontier law,” Buck said coolly.

“What charge do you suppose you’d trump up?”

“Makin’ yerself a goddamn public nuisance.”

Holt made a little neck gesture. Vin didn’t like to see it. It was too reminiscent of Ezra looking at a no way out.

“Where cousin Standish is concerned, any disclosure would be more like a public service.”

Vin half wanted to hear what Holt had to say, to know what he’d worked out from whatever he saw down that dark alley. And if there was more on his mind. He didn’t think anything much would surprise him about Ezra. Whether Holt said he was a crook, a pervert or a deserter. It wouldn’t surprise him, and anyhow it would make no damn difference now. Same as he was prepared to hear how Chris had gained his reputation as a gunman and figure anything that sounded bad would have a reason behind it. Or things that Buck had done in the past, or Josiah—especially Josiah. Vin knew there were shades and shades of bad and good, a whole contrary spectrum blending together when you looked at things a certain way. He figured it was one of the pieces of knowledge that kept him rooted to the white man and his ways. Codes of honor were complex in the tribes but they made perfect sense to him. He didn’t expect men’s behavior to make that kind of sense here in town. It didn’t matter, though, not when he knew he was still alive because of Chris and Josiah and the others. And Ezra.

“We don’t want your service.” That was JD, sounding bullish.

Holt fingered the silky pale cravat he was wearing, as if to remind himself of who he was and how damn rich, then spread his hands flat on the table, ready to get up. “Well you may not, but I am sure that the more upright citizens of this town most assuredly will. Money or no money.”

“Get outa here,” Buck said. He sounded at the end of his tether.

Holt pushed up from the table, rose to his full height. With one small tug to the hems of his pristine jacket, he turned to exit the saloon. Nathan mumbled something as the doors slapped shut.

“Wonder what dirt he’s about to spread.” Josiah was thoughtful, uneasy.

“I ain’t inclined to care about his opinion on anything, no matter what he says. Reckon we all have our own thoughts on Ezra, good and bad.”

“Why in heck’s he so interested in Chris though?” Buck wondered out loud.

Vin kept his mouth shut. Part of him didn’t want to. He didn’t rightly know what to make of the idea of Chris and Ezra having that kind of regard for one another. Not even because they were men, more because they were Chris and Ezra and he knew what people were like. What a mob was like. But whatever it all amounted to, this new truth between them, he knew they’d need protection because of it. And Vin knew he wouldn’t be enough on his own.

And hell. Even without that he damn well hated being the keeper of secrets.

*

Chris made it out to his place an hour or two before sundown.

The closer he got the more peaceful his frame of mind, and that wasn’t always the case when he was headed here. It was a warm, pastel evening, full of the scents of early summer and his horse enjoyed the run. While he didn’t know exactly what he was going to find out when he arrived, he knew the first thing he was going to do.

Ezra had dragged an upright chair outside, was sitting half in shade, half in the fading sun, facing the way Chris rode in. His jacket was hung on a nail tacked into the front wall of the shack. From a distance Chris could see he’d removed his tie and loosened the top button of his shirt. In one hand was clasped his flask and he was taking a small slug from it when Chris dismounted, tied up his horse under a tree and walked over. He looked like he’d been sitting there most of the afternoon.

“Awaiting your instructions,” he said, wiping his mouth.

Chris dropped his bag of tools and supplies. It was uncommonly strange to have Ezra sitting there at his place, in such a pose of relaxation. The man had hardly ever visited on his own, and even when he had he’d never done any of the helpful jobs the others always seemed to find time for. Uncommonly strange and uncommonly right.

“Tell me what happened.”

“It’s quite the tale.” Ezra was acid. He extended the flask towards him and Chris took it. He swigged and handed it back. Then he leaned right down and planted a kiss on Ezra’s lips. It was a light, daytime kiss. Full of affection, tingling with the liquor. The soft kind he hadn’t imagined ever wanting to bestow on anyone ever again, but that he’d known he would soon as he’d woken up this morning. Ezra’s eyes narrowed in reaction, wondering but not displeased.

“Go on then,” Chris said. “Tell me.”

Ezra licked his lips. “It appears my late lamented grandparent has singled me out for special appreciation.”

The dismal thought came to Chris that Ezra wasn’t just rich all of a sudden. He was stinking rich.

“How come?”

“Well, bear in mind he had little memory of me. There was only one time I can recall when we were under the same roof, Aunt Sadie’s roof. I received a handwritten note from the lawyer, something rather less than the effusive letter he penned for Holt. ‘For the attention of grandson Standish…’”

“Why the hell you people even bother with Christian names when you never goddamn well use ‘em?”

“We people?”

“Tell me about the fuckin’ money, Ezra!”

His brow quirked and he offered the flask again but Chris waved it away.

“There is no money.”

“What?”

“Not for the likes of me. Not a sou.” Ezra smiled, humorless. “The note the lawyer handed over observed that since I was so utterly different from the rest of the family he thought money would mean nothing.”

“You mean he ain’t left you… anything?”

“I told you. Not a plugged nickel. He bequeathed a more personal object instead.”

“It worth something?”

“Why, Mr. Larabee, you surprise me.” Ezra looked at his flask and Chris wondered if he was about to address it. He did that sometimes, rambling in the direction of inanimate objects when he couldn’t face any of them. His head wagged. “As for worth… well, I’m no expert. Perhaps you could tell me.”

Shifting in the chair, he balanced the flask for a second and then, flustered, put it on the boards between his feet. Then he reached across to the jacket, lifting it off the hook and laying it over his knees. Carefully he extracted a square paper packet from the inner lining and held it out.

Chris took it. The paper was wrinkled and well traveled. It had been sealed the old-fashioned way, with wax that weighed more than the packet and its contents. He lifted the flap. There was a flat object inside and he took it out. It was light, looked old and felt unpleasantly tacky to the touch.

“That’s…” Chris was puzzled, and troubled. Felt a sinking feeling.

“Yes,” Ezra agreed, sounding defeated. “A comb. Clarified cow horn I do believe. Functional rather than decorative, designed for personal grooming despite the lack of teeth and uh… still greasy from use as you can see. I do believe it to be of no value at all, not in monetary terms, in utility or in… well, any positive sentiment whatsoever.”

“He… maybe he was tryin’ to tell you something?”

“You’re inspired.”

“Hell I don’t know…”

“Oh you do. You and Holt know and the others will know. Really, it would have been more than enough to leave me no money. To pen some words explaining there was no inheritance due to the grandson for whom he had little or no regard. That at least would have reflected truth. This item fit only for the trash on the other hand…”

Chris turned the comb over. “Well listen,” he said. “My grandpa left me a whittling knife. Ain’t worth nothin’.”

“Don’t.”

Chris sighed. “Well hell. I’m sorry.”

“That I have been thwarted?”

“That you been hurt.” He dropped the object back inside the packet, not wanting to touch it anymore, closed the flap and held it out. Ezra chewed the inside of his cheek.

“I’m not keeping it.”

“Well I know it ain’t much, but maybe it meant something to him?”

“Far be it from me to speak ill of the dead, but he was a cold-hearted son-of-a-bitch, and not averse to playing spiteful tricks on those that displeased him.”

“I believe you. Same as I believe the best gift he probably ever gave you was cutting you and your ma loose.”

Ezra’s lip curled. “You mean I’d have turned out even worse if I’d stayed in the fold?”

“Hard to imagine,” Chris agreed, liking the spark of humor that lit between them out of nowhere. “But maybe.” He held out the packet again. “Looks like he kept it a long time. Maybe he had it before he ever got to be a cold-hearted son-of-a-bitch.” He paused. “Maybe your ma would know.”

Ezra sat still, staring into the haze lying over the hills. Chris leaned closer and slapped his chest with the packet. “Her father just died. How come you ain’t gone to see her?”

“We don’t-” Ezra began, teeth closing. He visibly made an effort to relax. “We just… don’t.”

“She ain’t gonna be grieving?”

“In her own way.”

“I remember my ma.” The thought came unbidden. She was there, suddenly, inside Chris’s head, her well-remembered face and voice, the black dress, worn for a month and no more. “Hell knows my grandpa never made her life easy. I mean, he was a decent man and all. Strong. But he didn’t make life easy for her. So she had that to grieve over too, when he passed.” He steeled his voice. “Ain’t just you won’t see someone no more. Sometimes there’s harder things than that.” Once more he slapped the packet against the nearest shoulder and a hand came up and took it from him.

“Let’s eat,” Chris said. He picked up his bag and hefted it over one shoulder. Stepping past Ezra he walked in the open door, spoke over his shoulder. “Let’s eat, let’s finish all the liquor and then let’s go to bed.”

Ezra stood up from the chair, draping his jacket over the seat. He’d slid the packet into the back pocket of his pants. “You call that pile of planks a bed?”

“It’ll do. Time we did some of those things we both bin thinkin’ about. Rather be fuckin’ shot for havin’ done it than havin’ just imagined it.”

It felt good to be out here, the two of them on their own.

“Fuckin’ shot?” Ezra mimicked and the obscenity was downright slow and meaningful coming from his mouth. “Or the other way about?”

He came in behind and stood looking into the corner. Chris followed his gaze before he dropped his bag on the table with a thud.

The low, wide cot pushed into the far wall was a more robust structure than it looked. Not very handsome, but planted solid enough on the floor. The mattress was insubstantial, barely the thickness of two bedrolls, and the blankets and pillows were in one hell of a jumble. Thinking about it, they’d likely need to hang on to one another to keep from falling off the edge, but that didn’t seem like such a hardship.

Chris dug in the bag for the whiskey and grinned at him.

*

In the end the meal was mostly abandoned, although the rest of the liquor was sipped slow and tasted on each other’s lips.

Hell, it was both the dirtiest and the purest few hours of pleasure Chris could remember, even though Buck would barely have counted it a real fuck.

It was almost better than that, although Chris wouldn’t have been able to explain why. Perhaps because he knew it was only the beginning.

For the first time in weeks, he slept a deep and honest sleep. Still woke up alone though, aware straight away that the night’s answering warmth at his back was gone.

Sitting bolt upright with a curse he kicked aside the mess of bedcovers. As he was hauling on his pants, throwing a shirt round his shoulders and struggling bare feet into his boots, he could see movement through the windows.

Out in the dewy light Ezra was dressed and saddling his horse.

The banging of the door swinging wide made him look up. He didn’t stop what he was doing, though, just carried on.

Chris clomped across the dirt to him.

“Now what?” he asked, tamping down the rising feeling of dread.

“Think my mother may still be in St. Louis.”

Chris guessed he’d been more persuasive on family matters than he realized.

“You’re not goin’ back to town?”

That had been his first thought.

“No,” Ezra said, “But you are.”

They’d talked about how they shouldn’t both be absent, speculating fruitlessly about whether Holt had made his disclosure yet and if he’d found any takers for it if he had.

“Ah hell.” The dread curdled in his gut. “Just decided I c’n stand you and you’re goddamn well leavin’?”

“Perhaps there is a history.” Ezra patted his pocket and then laid the hand on Chris’s sleeve. “Perhaps you’re right. Anyhow, I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt.” He ran the hand down the arm, brushed a thumb against the inside of Chris’s wrist. “But only because it’s you.”

“The boys think you’re in Eagle Bend. They’re expectin’ you back. What’ll I tell ’em?”

Ezra smiled at that, good-humored. “Whatever you like,” he said, dimples flashing. “Tell them I skipped town.” His fingers tightened round Chris’s whole hand and then released.

Less than an hour after Ezra’s horse disappeared through the trees, re-emerged at the other side and then vanished from view over the brow of a hill, Chris saddled his own mount and kicked for town.

He hadn’t needed the tools, hadn’t done much around the place. Still, he’d made up the bed before he left, just like Sarah would have done. As if it would be slept in again soon.

*  
Vin met him on the outskirts.

“You ever stop watchin’ all our backs?” Chris asked as he rode up. Seeing Vin made the dread recede, even though he could still feel it, lodged small and cold in the pit of his stomach.

“Well now would be a real bad time.” Vin was caustic.

“We safe?”

“He ain’t made no big announcement ‘cause I warned him off. Wouldn’t take no more than one word to send things to hell though. Would sure help if the others knew.”

Their horses had fallen into step. “Ah hell, Vin, you didn’t?”

“Nope. But you and Ezra should think about it. Specially if yer thinkin’ of makin’ it permanent.” He frowned. “He ain’t left has he?”

Chris got stuck on the word ‘permanent’ and just nodded in response.

“No money, huh?” Vin said and Chris marveled yet again at how well he read what was written in silence.

“Ain’t why he left though.”

They rode for a while before Vin spoke again, and then it was bald and brief, bringing the conversation to a close.

“We need ta be ready,” he said. “Because everything’s gonna change.”

*

JD was the only one who seemed disappointed about the money.

In the end though he was more disappointed that Ezra apparently wasn’t coming back from Eagle Bend quite as soon as they’d thought. It was going to take him a day or two to work out he hadn’t gone there in the first place.

“Guess we know more about him now,” he decided.

“I’m not so sure we don’t know less,” Josiah replied.

Nathan wouldn’t say much except he hoped Ezra wasn’t in any trouble.

“Come on now,” Buck chided, wicked. “Is that likely?”

Chris took a walk over to Butterfields later, once the stage was being loaded with some mail. Vin’s warning looked to have worked far as he could see, but he wanted to see Fitzgerald Holt leave, make sure of it.

The old lawyer, still white as a ghost, was visible through the office window. He was fanning himself with a newspaper, even though it wasn’t a hot day. Holt and his luggage was nowhere to be seen and a sudden fear gripped Chris that he wasn’t going after all.

His temporary ‘office’ in the saloon had been cleared of ink and papers. The table was pristine and empty again, although it still wouldn’t look right to Chris, not until Ezra was up there under a cloud of smoke, shot glass to his elbow. The hotel informed him the guest from Atlanta had checked out.

“I do believe Mr. Holt was planning to swing by the Clarion, speak to Mrs. Travis,” the clerk said artlessly. “Said it was important.”

Chris arrived there just as Holt was coming out of the door.

“Why, Mr. Larabee,” he said, closing it behind him and glancing swiftly left and right as if expecting to see the rest of the regulators lining up alongside him. “I was just talking about you.”

“Gonna tell me what you were saying?”

Holt adjusted his suit cuff absently, then smoothed his necktie. Not surprisingly he was dressed smart as a new pin. Chris couldn’t see why, seeing as he was just going to be squashed inside a damn bone rattler for the next half day. He guessed it was what gentlemen did. Maude Standish, who never failed to alight from the dustiest of coaches looking faultless, sprang to mind.

“It was a private conversation.” Holt was clipped. “Have you come to wish me farewell, or was there something else?”

Chris flicked his eyes to the window of the Clarion office. “That depends,” he said.

“I will be returning,” Holt said smoothly. “You can tell Ezra that, when you see him.”

“What in the hell for?”

“Do some more business maybe.” He inclined his head towards the office slightly.

Looking straight at him Chris saw again something of Maude in the clever eyes staring back, a little of Ezra in the fine features, and who knew? Maybe a whole lot of Grandfather Beauregard that he just wouldn’t recognize.

Holt was unperturbed by the direct gaze. He just smiled slightly. And Chris knew then that he wouldn’t have said anything. Not yet. Fitzgerald Holt was damn well going to play the long game, just as Ezra had said. He was going to keep on coming back, and they probably wouldn’t ever know when.

Turning away, Chris began up the street towards the saloon, aware that Holt had said something teeth-grindingly polite to his back.

The stage rolled out of town twenty minutes later.

Chris was sitting with Buck by then, watching it go. And when the dust had settled again they stayed where they were, drinking a beer and just being old friends. Across the street Vin stood in the open door of the jailhouse, coffee cup in hand. JD was inside, probably yapping at him from time to time judging from the occasional distracted nod Tanner was giving. Further away they could just about hear the tap-tap of Josiah’s hammer. He and Nathan were up on the church roof again.

Vin was right, Chris thought. Soon enough, everything was going to change. Just for now though… he wanted this.

While Buck kept his gaze on the comings and goings, Chris got out his knife and a nice, smooth piece of kindling he’d found in the woodpile back at his place.

Not thinking of anything much, he made a few marks.

“Well look who it is,” Buck said eventually. He’d leaned back in his chair and crossed one boot over another, settling the mug of beer against his belly.

Chris didn’t say anything although he knew where Buck was trying to lead him. Mary Travis was meandering up the opposite boardwalk in conversation with the current owner of Virginia’s. She looked as she always did—neat and sweet and bright-faced.

“She’ll be sorry he’s gone.”

Still Chris didn’t respond. He sensed the threat of a smile coming though, when he heard Buck chuckle to himself. They watched her slow to a stop, standing pretty as a picture in the sunshine.

“Fine woman,” Buck murmured. “A fine woman looking for a fine man.” He turned his head slightly, made that face at him. “Don’t know what your problem is.”

Chris heard Grandpa on women and pocketbooks again. He suddenly felt glad he didn’t agree with the old man. Never had. And glad, too, he didn’t agree with Buck.

“So,” Buck carried on, good-humored and combative both at once, which felt about right. “If you don’t step up to the plate, she’s gonna turn to… some feller like Holt. And before long he’ll be back out here and this place’ll be so prosperous and law-abiding… well, there won’t be room for any of us no more. We’ll all hafta up sticks and move on.”

Perhaps it would be like that, the day some or all of them left—although not for the reasons Buck was thinking. Hell no, it was likely to be something much more difficult and dangerous. Something they’d need to pull together hard to survive. It would be Fitzgerald Holt’s own grubby little bequest—a legacy of secrets that couldn’t be ignored. Just ready to be taken out of a carefully sealed packet and presented, at a time of his goddamn choosing.

“What do you think?” Buck pursued on a yawn, still on the subject of Mary.

Chris shifted in his chair, let his eyes stray briefly towards the line of hills through which the stage had left. Through which, more importantly, Ezra would return.

“I think good for her,” he said and fell back to whittling, feeling the knife safe and familiar in his grasp.

 

-ends-


End file.
